'The Leaders are Catching Up with the People'



allAfrica.com

INTERVIEW
February 10, 2002
Posted to the web February 11, 2002

Washington, DC

The launching of the African Union at the OAU's Lusaka Summit of the Heads
of State and Government in July last year marks a major transition for
Africa, an opportunity to move beyond the post-colonial rollercoaster of
aspiration and disappointment.

The legislation that constituted the AU calls for economic and monetary
union and the economic integration of the continent. For many, it's a chance
to leave failed policies and over-powerful presidents behind and enter a new
era of rational, evolutionary change led by competent professionals. Decades
of leadership by self-interested leaders in the OAU could be replaced by an
African parliament, a central bank, an African court of justice and other
pan-continental institutions.

This year's African Development Forum - the annual conference hosted by the
UN's Economic Commission for Africa in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa -
is focused on the transition to the AU. AllAfrica asked John Githongo,
executive director of Transparency International in Kenya, and a member of
Transparency International’s global board, to discuss the pros and cons of
African integration. Excerpts:

Are people right to be sceptical about the integration of the continent as
we move towards the African Union?

I think people have a right to be sceptical, considering the past history. I
mean, if you go through all the OAU’s different resolutions...(laugh) one
could think they’ve been done by a writer of fiction, I mean, because the
OAU sits down and makes resolutions which don’t amount to very much,

However, there have been fundamental developments. I mean, the very fact
that African leaders these days don’t sit back when a coup attempt takes
place is a very major development. There are other positive things that have
happened; like the whole tide of political pluralism that took place after
the fall of the Berlin Wall which was really imposed on many [African]
countries by outside donor pressure, Western countries who were excited by
what had happened in Europe and saw that perhaps the wind of change could
blow across Africa as well, which, to a certain extent, it did with
imperfect results. Even though the Western governments were very key in
pushing for that second wind of change in the early 1990s, their interest or
initiative happened to coincide with the aspirations of a majority of the
African population, so across the continent Africans supported this change.

Another source of scepticism is the fact that this whole thing is
bankrolled, to a certain extent, by Gadaffi; but, number one, I think the
idea of African integration resonates for the majority of African people;
you’d be hard-pressed to find an ordinary African who doesn’t think that
African unity is a good idea at a purely emotional level.

Number two, if one is pragmatic about it, Muammar Gadaffi, despite using his
own sort of odd ideology, has nonetheless been the funder of a huge amount
of destabilization and bloodshed on the African continent so it’s good, for
a change, that Gadaffi is not sort of funding all sorts of crack-pots on the
continent to kill Africans. He’s pulling his weight. He’s putting his money
and his mouth behind an initiative which meets the aspirations of a majority
of African people.

But that is exactly why people are so skeptical. They're asking; "the same
people who brought us war and misery all these years are now the people who
are now going to deliver us into a unified, and economically prosperous
continent?." People feel that there is a fundamental flaw in the thinking
here, that this isn’t a democratic process, this is something that’s
happening up there at the top; the leaders are just moving the furniture.

I don’t think so. I think, purely by coincidence, this time they’re pushing
something which Africans will like.

I don’t think that the current crop of African leaders, especially the
old-time leaders like Gadaffi, are going to be the ones to see this project
through. I think it’s going to be seen through by a different generation.
Gadaffi and company aren’t going to be there forever. A lot of multiparty
elections have taken place across Africa. We have constitutional amendments,
which were made in the 1990s which mean many of the old guard African
leaders aren’t going to be around in five to 10 years time. History has
moved beyond the Mugabes, and you have major change. Yes, it’s going to be
temporarily very unstable and possibly quite bloody which is sad and
unfortunate, but some of these changes are positive ones. I don’t think it’s
musical chairs.

I do think that some key African leaders, in my opinion, haven’t yet taken
this initiative totally seriously; once Nigeria, South Africa and company
take it on board properly, it will have very serious expression.

First, we are going to see the Nepad initiative, which is fronted by
Obasanjo, Mbeki, and Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, being integrated with the AU
initiative.

The other thing you’ve got to realize, Africans are integrating a lot more
rapidly than the politicians. The African Union and other integration
initiatives are simply trying to catch up with the integration that is
taking place across the continent, partially due to developments in
information technology, but also because the borders have become a lot more
porous as governments become less functional.

So what characterizes that integration?

What characterizes that integration is a country like Kenya, where 20 years
ago, regional trade accounted for 10-15% of overall trade. Now it’s up to
40% and still rising. The same is true for many other African countries.
Even Zimbabwe, which is having a rough time economically, is trading a lot
more intensively within the region. Now this hasn’t come about because of
some grand plan by old-style leaders. It’s come because of ordinary African
business people having to face a very difficult international environment
and responding to that by realizing that if they’re going to survive they’re
going to have to take regional trade a lot more seriously.

What other signs are there that ordinary Africans are ahead of the
politicians?

Well take Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania; if you walk into any Kenyan bank now,
you can take Tanzanian shillings, Ugandan shillings and change them. That
wasn’t possible as little as 10 years ago, so that’s beginning to happen.

Then there is a lot of informal trade across borders. What is happening in
the Congo is very unfortunate, with countries walking in there and fighting
a war, trying to sort out their own internal political contradictions on
Congolese soil; but in the long term, the whole process will have the effect
of integrating the economies of the region in very profound ways. What’s
happening now is quite unfortunate with a lot of profiteering and looting;
but I think the effects will ultimately be beneficial. We have more
progressive leaders like Joseph Kabila and company coming in, younger
leaders, they will be able to take advantage of these developments in a more
systematic manner.

So in practical terms, what do you now want to see? I mean, people talk
about a Central Bank for Africa, they talk about currency unification and a
number of other measures. But what, for you, are the three big things that
have to happen to support this process?

I think the most important thing is the harmonization of trade regimes which
is a hard process; it takes time, even the Europeans took very long, and
they still haven’t sorted out issues with regard to agriculture, for
example. Within Comesa, we are grappling with it; within the East African
Community we are throwing significant intellectual resources at these issues
and I think trade liberalization is a start - before you start talking about
single currencies and single central banks.

The other thing that’s needed is the rule of law. For example, in East
Africa we now have an East African Court which will deal with issues of
integration and trade issues between the countries; that’s a very important,
positive development because eventually it will mean we have increasingly
stabilization of human rights. At the end of the day we want business to
grow and people to live in peace and security; for that you need respect for
the rule of law.

In states where you have great weaknesses in internal judicial systems, many
of which have been 'captured' by ruling elites, perhaps having these
regional structures that can act as agencies of final recourse for the
citizens of African countries, one step removed from local politics, may be
a step in the right direction.

So - trade harmonization and creating institutions of recourse for business
people and ordinary Africans - both very important.

How worried are you that the lack of protection for African economies is
just going to make it very easy for more powerful economic nations to
benefit from this process, while Africa is damaged by them?

That is possibly true. But the fact of the matter is, that’s a battle that
our nations are currently fighting individually and they have very weak
voices on the international stage; if they can fight them collectively, by
first sorting out their own internal differences, they could be stronger. We
have a little situation between Kenya and Uganda, for example, where we have
different limits for axle loads where Ugandan trucks can carry x number of
tons and Kenyan ones can carry x plus 20%; that is completely crazy when you
try to harmonize tax regimes and that kind of thing. We have to sort things
out at that bureaucratic level before we can have a strong voice for
protecting our own internal industries at the international level. I think
we will be able to do it.

Some people will say to you, look at an economy like South Africa’s where
all the protections were removed: now what you’re seeing is money
haemorrhaging out of that country and a currency that’s losing value at the
rate of knots; and they're asking, is this really what we want to do to the
rest of the continent?

Yes and South Africa is in a difficult position because when South Africans
tried to raise that argument, they faced great international pressure and
were accused of returning to socialism and protectionist policies; but if
South Africa was making those arguments in a collective way, in partnership
with other African countries they would be able to act with more
effectiveness. The key to effectiveness is solidarity. If Thabo Mbeki were
not having to make all these arguments by himself then he would be able to
implement measures that would not be met with such a huge international
outcry because it would be part of a collective initiative.

If you look towards the management of this pan-continental economy, which
institutions are going to make the rules and why should anyone have trust in
them?

I think that the key thing is for African countries to develop collective
mechanisms for guaranteeing the rule of law, for guaranteeing the protection
of property and human life. Once you have that, then business has the
ultimate ingredient for an enabling environment. They create an environment
where single currencies would become manifestly logical to all the players
involved and these initiatives would be trusted. But right now you have a
situation in many countries where the rule of law doesn’t apply and there
are no agencies of final recourse for people who may feel that they have
been hard done by, in the way of business or human rights abuses.

So are you anticipating that the dictatorial tendencies of individual
African leaders will, in some way, be undermined by an regional approach to
law-making and monitoring, as in the European Union where human rights
lobbyists and various others have sought to use the European courts to force
their own governments into more liberal positions than they would otherwise
have taken?

Absolutely; and the key thing is that when you have issues like the
harmonization of trade regimes and the moment you have national governments
who begin to understand and respect the fact that a large part of their
taxes are being paid thanks to trade, a situation develops where undermining
the rule of law is committing suicide. Part of the reason European
governments behave the way they do, even when they don’t individually want
to sometimes, is because everybody wants to be part of the EU. The most
important thing about the European Union is, it’s good business, it’s good
economics, it makes money, it keeps economies growing, so everyone wants to
be part of it for that reason. [ADF3]



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