An Introduction to Governance in Africa (original) (raw)

Towards the Africa 'We Want': Reconstructing Governance

Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 2018

This study identifies governance gaps in Africa and examines how these can be filled. It is based on content and text analysis informed by an interpretivism approach/constructivist concern as the philosophical assumption. Good governance is critical for political and developmental discourse for the Africa states. The African Union (AU) prescribes the adherence to the pursuit of this principle. Given the uneven historical and developmental backgrounds, governance is in deficit in most of the African countries hence the realisation of this goal demands formidable strategizing. Although several states are plodding their way toward establishing good governance, the threshold is yet to be crossed by many. Good governance is developmental, enables economic growth and the judicious use of available resources. Governance in disarray results in the deterioration of state relations, eventually leading to political instability. Towards reconstruction, the AU through the African Peer Review (AP...

The new frontier of governance in Africa

This article examines Africa's good governance agenda since the early 1990s, tracing the emergence of the ideas of democracy and self-governance in the region. As a point of departure, the paper argues that self-governance as practised in Africa today is disconnected from the everyday challenges of the masses. The paper uses a social perspective approach to provide insight about self-governance in Africa. Centrally, it argues that in light of social, economic and political issues, the purpose of governance should be reframed in terms of service delivery. To achieve this, actors within the governance process, both in and outside government, must see their function primarily as rendering services to the citizens with whom they have a social pact. The paper acknowledges globalisation as the most important challenge that governments will have to grapple with in delivering much-needed development on the continent. Nevertheless, leadership in all spheres of society remains critical for improving self-governance for development.

Rethinking African Governance Architecture; Lessons and Recommendations for Action

Abstract- What has been seen from the experiences of African countries is that a leadership style based on command and control is no longer suited for making a capable state, characterized by constitutionalism. This will require high-level skills combined with strong commitment and determination on the part of African leaders at large. Beyond the coming into power with a limited experience, African leaders are too stubborn and are attacked by rigidity and no room for dynamism in their character. This situation contributes its part to the today’s insecure governance structure in the continent. If African leaders and the government they lead are dedicated to the rights, unity and well-being of their people, they will ensure the consolidation of their nation and its security which will have a cumulative transformation on the governance architecture of the continent. Recently, Africa needs leaders that understood the social, economic and political forces that constitute the security arena and who never forget their role as an ultimate stakeholder for promoting good governance and the subsequent events of wealth creation and sustainable development in the continent. Keywords: good governance, leadership, development, africa. GJHSS-F Classification : FOR Code: 120199

Governance and Development in Africa

Public Administration and Public Policy, 2015

Many new development initiatives have been introduced in Africa over the past few decades. Each of these has been heralded as marking a new era in the continent's development. However most of these initiatives have failed to produce sustained results due to numerous challenges, including most importantly the lack of good governance. The Africa Progress Panel stated in 2011 that good governance is the key enabling factor for sustainable development. This book discusses the role good governance plays in achieving sustainable development and eradicating extreme poverty in Africa.

Better Global Governance for a Stronger Africa: A New Era, a New Strategy

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014

While African countries have made substantial progress over the past two decades, characterized by higher growth and modest improvements in social and human development, they still face great challenges. These include high and stubborn levels of poverty, rising youth unemployment, structural fiscal imbalances and dependence on external financial assistance, heavily concentrated production and trade implying high vulnerability to shocks. Policy recommendations to handle these challenges have typically focused on what African countries themselves-or with the support from their development partners-should do to improve the continent's economic fate. Less attention has been devoted to the role of global governance in addressing these challenges. Yet, features of the global governance architecture that undermine national policy and international cooperation continue to hamper efforts at the national, bilateral, and multilateral levels aimed at finding solutions to these development challenges. This paper discusses these issues and provides some policy suggestions.

Pan-African initiatives in global governance

2013

As recently as 2009, a five hundred page textbook on international relations did not even mention the African Union in its index. The same applied to the Wikipedia entry on international organizations until a colleague of this author corrected that omission in 2011. The mainstream international relations literature has the perspective that our continent is marginal, the AU invisible, and Africa is a problem, that is spoken to, or spoken for. African agency in global governance is a perspective whose time has come. Drawing on constructivist and transformational theories, this paper explores how the African Union family or organizations, including its regional communities such as COMESA, EAC, ECOWAS, and SADC, seek to engage with and negotiate Africa's positioning in global governance. These Pan-African initiatives go far beyond anything that ASEAN, the Arab League, or the OAS have succeeded in.

Beyond Appearance: The Challenges of Rethinking Governance in Post-Independence Africa

Lagos Historical Review, 2020

Governance in post-colonial Africa has been challenging. Most of the nationalists and political elites that emerged as leaders of post-colonial African states appeared unready for governance when independence was granted leaving most of the emergent states in the hand of unprepared leaders who grope in an unfamiliar jungle of Western-styled politics and governance. The consequences of this adventure for the development of postindependence Africa have been grave. Adopting a historical approach and using content analysis, this paper examines the source of problematic governance in post-independence Africa and the challenges to rethinking it. It interrogates measures for liberating African states from the difficulty of reengineering governance. It observes that some common factors mostly celebrated as positively impacting African states, in no small way, serve as limitations to rethinking governance in the continent and concluded that rethinking governance in Africa is not impossible. Some of the encumbrances to rethinking governance are transitory, which would change once the supporting dynamics change.

The Plight of African States and Good Governance

2003

Promoting good governance and improving governance in Africa has drawn increasing attention from the international community as a new approach to solving a variety of problems such as military conflicts, poverty, and sluggish economic development. The question of how to achieve good governance came under the spotlight in the 1990s following the end of the Cold War era. Establishing good governance, along with democratization, has now come to be recognized an issue related to the “conditionality” imposed by donor countries on recipients in exchange for financial assistance. Structural reform programs crafted by the World Bank and the IMF in the 1980s were the first set of policy prescriptions by the world community to address sluggish development in Africa. Under “the Washington Consensus,” the World Bank and the IMF called for the battered economies of Africa, which were plagued with expanding budget and current-account deficits since the late-1970s, to reform their political and ec...