African countries shouldn’t see development goals as a bother

I spoke at the Open Government Partnership (OGP) 2015 Africa Regional Meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania last week after being invited, alongside others, to discuss and determine the future of the Open Government Agenda in Africa.

Eight founding nations of the Partnership, namely USA, UK, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines and Norway, sought to advance transparency and accountability in government through voluntary commitments, citizen engagement, and progress monitoring reports.

Since launching in 2011, the partnership’s ambitious agenda has attracted 60 countries. Some of its members, including Tanzania, have already implemented numerous practical reforms. Kenya, Tanzania and Liberia were among the first African countries to join the partnership.

This partnership was hardly the first time African countries were engaging with issues of transparency and accountability. 

In 2003, African governments came up with the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), which as per its website, is a mutually-agreed instrument voluntarily acceded to by the member states of the AU as a self-monitoring mechanism.

The mandate of the APRM is to encourage conformity on political, economic and corporate governance values, codes and standards, among African countries and objectives in socio-economic development within the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).

BEYOND MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

As Africans tried to inculcate transparency and accountability, the United Nations (UN) came up with more specific objectives – initially dubbed Alliance 2015 – in the year 2000. The adoption by the UN Summit of the Millennium Development Goals under the United Nations Millennium Declaration should be seen in this light.

The underlying message from all these initiatives is the advancement of human rights, reduction of corruption and eradication of poverty. The deadline for the MDG targets is due at the end of this year.  Sadly, many countries especially in Africa, will not meet the goals. 

Regrettably, few countries have subjected themselves to peer review.  Of the 54 countries in Africa, only 18 that have gone through the peer review since the initiative began.

NOT JUST ANOTHER CONCEPT

As for the Open Working Group, many countries still have no clue what to make of it.  Most view it as yet another one of those concepts that come and go just like structural adjustments, peer review mechanism, and MDGs.

The OGP Working Group that is trying to put together a proposal for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposes seventeen objectives. A lot of thinking goes into the crafting of these goals for the sake of humanity’s progress but some of us in the developing countries see them as a bother. Even those that we come up with without foreign imposition are viewed in the same way.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that we hide the data and the fact that our academics always overreact, giving the politicians a chance to kill such noble objectives. 

If data were to be open in every country, we could interrogate it and make noise in areas where we are slackening.  This, in my view, is the reason why we always fail to meet the target.

Given the centrality of data to development, I hope that this time around open data features prominently as one of the goals.

The word “development” in its earlier, more authoritarian context is not as fashionable as it used to be in the last twenty years of the 20^th century.  The reason why it has become more subtle can probably be explained by the need to stealthily persuade the developing world into doing the correct thing for their citizens. 

In the past we have had such theories as theory of development, modernisation theory, and dependency theory, all of which were discarded without academics assessing their impact in the African context.

An earlier theory of development held that development was linear, and that all societies progressed through similar stages of development.  Seen this way, developing countries were in a similar path to that which developed countries had taken some time in the past. 

BACKTRACKING ON OPEN DATA

The task of helping the developing countries out of poverty was seen nothing more than accelerating them along this supposed common path of development through various means such as investment, technology transfers, and closer integration into the world market.

Proponents of dependency theory, comprising largely of apologists of Africa, specifically rejected the view that development is linear, arguing that developing countries are not merely primitive versions of developed countries but have unique features and structures of their own, and importantly, are in the situation of being the weaker members in a world market economy.

Several years have gone and we have not seen these unique features emerge.  Most of Asia came to the realisation that accelerating through investments, technology transfer and closer integration into the world was a better approach. The consequence is that they outpaced Africa.

While studying in the US, I noted that Asian countries dominated the best engineering schools.  In some classes, there were more Korean students than Americans.  Whilst African students struggled on their own, Korea was making investments in education and accelerating technology transfer as a strategy. 

They succeeded as African scholars and their governments waited for the unique features to pop up from heaven.  Our future will depend on the decisions we make today and data ranks up there if we want to succeed.

Some African countries are beginning to backtrack on open data, arguing that advanced countries will take our data.  The truth is that most advanced countries have better data sets on Africa than what we are trying to hide from our people.  It is time for Africans to acknowledge that open data is for us, not anyone else.  

THE CORRUPTION SCAPEGOAT

Data is a matter of life and death.  Consider the fact that the food we eat often has toxic contents that manufacturers want to hide from us.  It took the US government for us to know that much of the maize meal we eat contains aflatoxin but this data is often hidden from the public. 

A few years ago, we saw maize imports from southern Africa that had excessive amount of aflatoxin and even when the matter was brought to the fore, the maize was consumed locally. Unfortunately, we do not relate these stories to rising cases of cancer in the country.

For our underdevelopment, we have a nice scapegoat called corruption. Well, not everything can be blamed on corruption.  We need to change our culture, to appreciate that without more respect for data, the development we desire will be impeded. 

Whilst we follow strict standards for exports to Europe, we rarely concern ourselves with the standards at the source of our food.  We need data on where it comes from, the amount of chemicals used, as well as how it was transported and stored. These are basic requirements in the twenty-first century. 

Reports on the failing efficacy of most antibiotics is attributable to livestock farmers who milk their cows even when they know the cow has been treated with doses of antibiotics.  Our value systems are not up to standard and we must educate citizens on the right values and standards. 

We can create all manner of institutions to fight corruption but nothing fights corruption more effectively than Open Data.

The writer is an Associate Professor at University of Nairobi’s Business School. Twitter: @bantigito