It is time to infuse African leadership with new thinking, moral foundations

Watching African governments respond to the Covid-19 pandemic has been fascinating, provoking and illuminating. There are lessons we have learnt from their responses.

The first is that we need a lot more descriptive studies of African economies.

Coronavirus spread slowly in Africa — a reminder of the continent’s isolation from global transport networks. The first concentrated cases were in Egypt, largely among tourists.

But once cases started appearing across the continent, governments rushed to implement policies that were eerily similar to those in wealthier economies.

Lockdowns, tax breaks, business loans and interest rate cuts were announced. Cash transfers followed, but even then from the standard humanitarian perspective and not as part of a well-thought out, politically-grounded and sustainable policy response.

Forget that African economies are largely agrarian and rural and highly informal. How do you implement a lockdown when 80 per cent of your labour force is dependent on daily earnings and cannot stock up on food?

And how do you tell people wash hands regularly when the vast majority lack access to reliable running water? Does Africa have the capacity to sustainably deliver cash transfers to needy households throughout this crisis?

DATA COLLECTION

African states’ policy responses to the pandemic are an urgent reminder of the enormous gaps between knowledge production, policymaking and objective realities in the region.

To bridge these gaps, African governments should invest in making their economies more legible. Such investments should target better data collection and the establishment of strong academic departments with expertise in political economy and economic history.

What do we know about recovery patterns after recessions in African countries? How will the shutdown impact rural livelihoods? Africa cannot afford to continue making policy from positions of ignorance, or to outsource economic thinking.

Collect and analyse data. Have the results inform policy.

Such efforts will go a long way in helping craft domestic narratives and of socio-economic transformation, and hopefully entrench reality-based policymaking.

Policymakers must understand that their economies are not simply Denmark waiting to happen.

Secondly, African governments should strengthen their policy transmission mechanisms. One of biggest mistakes in the history of economic thought was the invention of the notion of “formal” and “informal” sectors.

This distinction continues to blind African policymakers and limits their abilities to craft transformative ideas.

SAFETY NETS

African governments are fixated on minuscule “formal” sectors, and spend billions of dollars attracting mythical foreign investors to create “formal” jobs.

Meanwhile, the same governments ignore “informal” and agricultural sectors, despite the fact that in most countries they account for significant shares of output.

The failure to adequately serve and regulate “informal” and agricultural industries leaves policymakers with blunt tools when it comes to these sectors.

How will governments ensure SMEs are not wiped out by this crisis? How will farm-to-market systems weather the logistical problems caused by shutdowns? What will be the impact on food prices?

It makes little sense to lower SME taxes or incentivise bank lending if the vast majority neither pay taxes nor borrow from banks.

“Informal” sector workers are typically not plugged into any skeletal social safety nets, such as insurance or pension schemes.

As the primary source of employment, the “informal” and agricultural sectors deserve more public investments targeted at broader market creation and productivity increases. Such investments would give governments important policy levers during good and bad times.

It is about time Africa’s economic policies and budgeting reflect that reality. Failure to do so will continue to limit the efficacy of policy interventions, and leave governments wasting resources.

Third, elite complacency in Africa is about to get more expensive. One need not be wearing a tinfoil hat to see the ways in which leaders continue acting like colonial “Native Administrators”.

HEALTHCARE

Some do not pretend to care about aspiring to govern ordered societies. For almost six decades, the global state system has accommodated elite mediocrity in Africa.

The collusion between African and non-African elites in pilfering the region’s resources was balanced with aid money and other support.

That is changing. Western elites and public have begun to question the utility of aid. Forgetting that the aid is what buys elite-level African alliances, they have come to expect loyalty from African states as a preordained birthright.

Many Western countries have also seen significant deterioration in the quality of their political leadership, thereby exposing them to domestic crises. China is not ready to step into the void.

African elites will be forced to step up. What do you do when, after decades of presiding over public health systems that are dependent on the generosity of foreigners, you cannot get on a plane to seek medical care abroad?

And how do you deal with a pandemic that hits the entire globe? It is no secret that the global public health architecture was built to police and contain disease outbreaks in low-income countries.

This has allowed African governments to routinely globalise their public health emergencies and therefore get away with poor governance.

The combination of an inward orientation of the “international community” and likely recurrence of truly global pandemics will mean that African states will have to build robust and sustainable domestic healthcare systems. Under these conditions, failure to plan will likely lead to mass deaths.

SOCIAL CONTRACTS

Fourth, it is about time that African progressivism — defined as working towards broad-based transformative change — focused not just on criticising those in power, but also on developing viable political programmes that can win power.

This will require organisation, political education and communication that resonates with masses, genuine openness to knowing the realities on the ground, and pragmatism.

The habit of waiting for enlightened voters and politicians under perfect institutional conditions concedes the fight to the region’s shamelessly inept water-carriers.

After 60 years in power, Africa’s ruling elites have become the most complacent lot in the world. Their destruction of higher education and the region’s intelligentsia has allowed them to limit the role of ideas in politics and policymaking.

It also helped that they found willing “apolitical” development partners in the international community.

Even the most progressive among them care more about their countries’ rankings in the World Bank’s Doing Business Index than in the state of their “informal” and agricultural sectors.

It is time to infuse African leadership with new thinking and moral foundations of social contracts. Only then will the region be in a position to build the resilience to weather emergencies.

Ken Opalo is a professor of political science at Georgetown University and the author of ‘Legislative Development in Africa’.