Although desirable, is democracy possible or even necessary in Africa? The history of Western Europe shows that democracy emerged when those in power found it in their interest to negotiate with domestic owners of assets for resources to fight wars. It wasn’t the emergence of democratic principles that spurred development of democracy; it was necessity.
However, African governments do not seek for resources from their own economies, but rather from international donors. This relationship undermines a vital incentive for governments in Africa to engage with their own peoples in negotiating the policies and institutional innovations that can ensure rapid economic growth.
How can African leaders be forced to negotiate with their people when making policies and building institutions? Leaders respond to those groups that provide the revenues they need. Africa’s producers however, even when organized formally, are not strong enough to demand crucial concessions from the state. In any case, businesses in Africa rarely work as a group, preferring to engage the government individually, seeking to further the interests of their individual companies.
In medieval Europe, absolute monarchs started to need more revenues to fund their wars.
Increasingly they relied on taxes from urban property owners, which gave these groups political power. England was the country where this developed first and others soon followed. Monarchs introduced the vote - limited to the propertied people at first - to reflect this dependence on the wealth-generating or wealth-possessing classes. This extended downwards through society in the 19th and 20th centuries.
African states are in a different position. They get most of their money from aid agencies, or from multi-nationals, so that is who they have to listen to. In countries where the government is not responding to domestic taxpayers, they won’t be promoting reforms to promote increased economic growth, and the government becomes the main source of capital, facilitating their control of potentially countervailing forces. In these countries, society is weak because the state doesn't have the usual reasons to be responsive to the rest of society.
What kind of extra pressures can be brought to bear on African governments to force them to take account of domestic interest groups? First, reformers within governments can push for measures that redefine government's role from being a patron, to being a service provider. The specter of violence in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the failed states of Sudan, Congo and Somalia, and general poor performance of most African economies, even when compared to their Asian counterparts, creates pressure on the governments to cede some power to internal reform groups to initiate changes from within.
However, it is not clear that this internally driven desire for reform is enough to deliver sustainable changes. Another reform element is ironically, but not surprisingly, international donor agencies. International agencies, mainly in response to increasing skepticism from citizens in developed countries, are pushing for transparency and better accounting of donor funds.
Again, this form of pressure cannot be guaranteed to deliver sustainable change since the impetus for change, citizens of other countries, are outside of the African countries and may not always prioritize African government reforms highly. Further, Africans cannot assume that the full range of policies that international aid agencies will press on national governments is aligned with their priorities.
Ultimately, Africans must create local ways of exerting pressure that can sustain pressure on governments to engage with citizens. One positive development is that all over Africa today, expectations of leaders are higher than before, though this is hard to define and quantify in the way one can for the need of states for taxes.
What does this mean for democracy in Nigeria? Nigeria is a special case in that oil provides the government with financial independence from aid agencies. The government is even independent of oil companies, because it can be sure that there’s always a market for oil.
In this sense Nigeria has a free-floating source of revenue from oil - rather like the medieval kings before their increased needs for funding to prosecute wars outstripped these sources and forced them to find accommodations with new social classes. It would appear from this that the Nigerian state does not have to listen to anybody, whether at home or abroad.
However, this is changing. There are two groups who may even force the government to listen - one positive, the other negative. On the positive side, the state is increasingly facing expectations from Nigerians as a whole, and the Delta people in particular, that state services will be available and well run. At the very least there is a feeling that they, the people, have been short-changed and poorly served by their government.
The negative group is anyone who can plausibly threaten to inflict on Nigeria the fate of Congo or Angola. That is, foreigners and wealthy nationals who control armed groups and violently seek control of oil. For this reason the overriding top priority of government must be to guarantee the peace, especially in the Niger Delta, if it is to avoid others encroaching into national territory in order to loot oil. Such an outcome would not only encroach on the state’s earnings from oil sales, it would threaten the integrity of the state and could lead to the kind of descent into disastrous civil war that has ravaged Congo, Angola and Sierra Leone.
The first connects with the second. General discontent provides fertile ground for violence, which can be exploited by those involved in oil bunkering. Consequently, it becomes imperative for the government to listen to and negotiate with groups who can avert violence and possible descent into war. There is a glimmer of hope that this is beginning to happen with the efforts by the Rivers State government, and the Presidency, to negotiate with domestic interests.
The negotiations going on now in Rivers State are not just about ceasefires, settlement of parties to the conflict and buyback of weapons; they are starting to touch on community development, transparency, participation - code words for finding ways to turn the oil money into proper schools, health centers, roads and water supply for the people.
A previous World Bank Director liked to say that Nigeria is a country with one President and 36 absolute monarchs. Even if we accept this description, perhaps, like their European predecessors, these absolute monarchs now have to learn to listen to their populations, and provide more for their populations, lest their revenues be threatened.
This would be a much more solid foundation for democracy in the Delta, and in Nigeria more widely, than any number of imported models of democracy and international observer missions to police them.
Hafsat and Andrew both live in Lagos, Nigeria
This article is originally published in This Day Newspapers (www.thisdayonline.com)