Whether regional blocs, like ECOWAS and COMESA, “made progress” is an empirical issue requiring a definition of ‘progress’, and a clear understanding of the objectives of the bloc.

During the late 1950s, African nationalists debated the independence outlook. Among the French colonies – Francophones, Guinea’s Sekou Toure alone insisted on, and was severely punished for, a clean break with France, even as the rest accepted membership to a parliament in Paris, making them provinces with ‘national’ flags and anthems. Meanwhile, the former British colonies – Anglophones – demanded a clean break, but remained in the British Commonwealth chaired by the Queen, only years later becoming The Commonwealth with a rotational chair. The Portuguese colonies – the Lusophones – were not even part of that conversation until their liberation after the mid-1970s.

But continentally. Nkrumah’s Cassablanca Group championed the immediate creation of a United States of Africa (USAf), while the Monrovia Group championed independent individual states. Tanganyikan Nyerere’s compromise was building of strong regional blocs that would eventually merge into an USAf.

Nyerere regionalism was probably influenced by the colonial East Africa Common Services Organisation (EACSO) between Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika, sharing an airline, central banking, education, taxation, human, plant and animal health research, posts and telecommunications, railways and harbours, etc. Britain refused Nyerere’s demand to delay Tanganyika’s 1961 independence so that it coincides with that of Kenya and Uganda. EACSO became the East African Community in 1966, collapsed in 1977 due to global politics, and was reborn in 1999, currently having six members.

 Nyerere also drove southern African liberation through the umbrella Frontline States (FS) against minority rule in Rhodesia, apartheid South Africa and the Portuguese colonies. Apartheid South Africa had various regional administrative arrangements under which it kept tabs on the neighbouring independent but land-locked countries – Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, alongside South West Africa (Namibia). The loose-knit FS arrangement became the16-member South Africa Development Cooperation (SADC, born 1992).

A final example is the 15-member Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS, born 1975): rather than the economy, it was the politics – perennial military coups, that led the regional leaders into seeking a solution, including the obligation to intervene. The Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security of 1999 significantly reduced coups, even if the recent past has seen a resurgence.

 

So Africa has long-standing experience with regional organisations of differing durations, motivated by divergent circumstances. Regional organisations are a means of overcoming the disadvantages of small political-economies. Whether such organisations have “made progress" requires appropriate analysis.

First, what is ‘democracy’; and what do you want it for? Democracy is not working for Africa, primarily because there is a captive pseudo-middle class which once satisfied by material assets acquired corruptly or otherwise, absconds its role of fighting for true democracy

The continent has diverse claims to 'democracy', operationalized by very divergent constitutions, policies, laws and practices. The focus should be on democracy's quality, rather than its quantity... on good governance [See https://mo.ibrahim.foundation/iiag]

Democracy is not an end in itself, but a means to ‘something’ – human development? The globally ‘accepted’ human development yardstick is the UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) which measures health (longevity/life expectancy), literacy and incomes. Invariably, the Scandinavians do well, despite not being the richest countries globally. But Gadaffi’s Libya had among the highest HDIs on the African continent despite being unapologetically undemocratic; and Rwanda has among the higher HDIs, but it has no freedom of speech, association, etc. [See http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/latest-human-development-index-ranking]

Conversely, Kenya has had a general election every 5 years since independence in 1963, but the national poverty rate is about 26% - 7.6mn in extreme poverty compared to 9mn in 2016. So Kenya’s extreme poverty is reducing, but the political system is not becoming more democratic, as will be evident between now and August 2022 general elections.

Thus human welfare can 'improve' without ‘democracy’; but that democracy can undermine human welfare.

So, Africa may have more countries holding elections, and less military governments; but that does not translate into free choice, democracy, good governance. It might be better to fight for an improved HDI, and hope that its liberating force instils democracy... hope that Kagame's successor is less autocratic,but development minded!

Poverty management is THE objective of the SDGs through a set of 17 ‘interlinked goals… designed to achieve a better more sustainable future for all’. Sweden has consistently had among the highest Human Development Index (HDI) scores, meaning it is among the world’s most ‘developed’ countries; yet its poverty rate has persisted – just under 2% since 1975. So for the foreseeable future, African poverty is unlikely to end.

Fighting ‘poverty’ requires a ‘correct’ conceptualization leading to the ‘right’ strategy, involving relevant inputs, outputs, outcomes and impacts. The output/outcome/impact nexus is important: antibiotics (input) will manage an infection (output); but the wrong dose can also kill useful bacteria (outcome), leaving the patient with new complications (impact).

The SDG framework underscores the need to see poverty beyond the lack money (primarily SDG) to the many others factors determining our quality of life. Thus the capitalist driven by the profit motive will want to produce more in disregard of the consequences; hence SDG 12 reminds us of ‘Responsible Consumption and Production’ – the output/outcome/impact nexus.

The SDGs can be channeled into the UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI), distinguishing which ones affect incomes, and/or health status/longevity, and/or literacy. A country’s HDI status, and indeed, sub-county HDI status enable focus on the nature/character of poverty, and the consequent determination of what strategies can ameliorate the said characteristics. Which specific SDG targets are best suited to resolve which specific constraints to improved health, literacy and/or incomes? But a monitoring and evaluation component is important that heeds the positive outputs while also ensuring there are no adverse outcomes and impacts. An improved train cargo service is important, but what happens to the hauliers and linked services?

So how do the SDGs relate to poverty reduction? Every Goal and its targets map onto one or more of the three HDI indicators and sub-indicators. As an SDG makes the rich richer, it pulls the poor into less poverty, in the SDG spirit of ‘leaving no one behind’! As a Goal enhances the quality of education, it must also pull people out of ignorance and illiteracy. And reduced income poverty and illiteracy cannot be achieved in an unhealthy population.

What could ‘African solutions’ possibly be in an increasingly globalized era?

After the 1945 end of the Second World War, the Cold War polarized the world into the East (Second World; communist; Warsaw Pact) and West (First World; capitalist; NATO). At 1945, the majority of today’s ‘developing countries’ were the ‘Third World’, who came together in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), designed to take no sides in the Cold War. Yet, Nkrumah’s ‘neocolonialism’ meant that NAM countries were at the mercy of the aggressive capitalist, former colonizer, First World countries, what with their political elites being products of the colonial system.

The Cold War’s collective security raised temperatures, but also deterred the crossing of the Rubicon. Thus, the major Cold War protagonists – USA and USSR, later Russia – have avoided each other, merely fighting smaller proxy wars.

Meanwhile, the UN has been conscious that want – poverty, can fuel instability and war, as do cross border disagreements. Thus, against the backdrop of the UNIVERSAL Declaration of Human Rights (1948), UN peace keeping has focused as much on improving human welfare; hence the Millennium Development Goals (2000-15: MDG) and Sustainable Development Goals (2015-30: SDG). MDG 8 and SDG 17 are about global technical and financial cooperation over the other seven MDGs and 16 SDGs. Thus investing in human welfare for peace and development is a global responsibility.

But the UN has also focused narrowly on conflict via the Security Council, and through the Secretary General’s UN Peace Keeping Forces (UNPKF) – the Blue Berets. Countries volunteer soldiers for specific engagements, six of the current 12 being in Africa. In 2004, Sudan objected to UNPKF in Darfur, and in the context of AU’s strategic Silencing the Guns by 2020, the UN Security Council approved the African Union Mission to Sudan in Darfur, eventually replaced by a UNPKF mission in 2007. The AU’s other peacekeeping initiative is AMISOM – Somalia, launched in 2007. The nine-country AMISOM has been funded by the UN, AU, and controversially by EU. The two examples illustrate that African initiatives are not that African.

Beside UN’s general endeavour for peace, the AU initiatives are driven by the knowledge that failed states become breeding grounds for civil war, terrorism and other unrest. Thus even though the peacekeepers have been African soldiers, the weight behind the initiatives could not sustainably be African. Some of the nine countries contributing AMISOM forces have indeed threatened to, or actually withdrawn some forces because EU reduced the monthly stipend from USD 1,000 pm to USD 800 pm. That smacks of mercenarism rather than a bona fide commitment to a cause.

‘Terrorism’ is a maligned term assigned to non-State actors with a real or imagined political, social or religious grievances against their own State and/or citizens, and resort to violent means of publishing that grievance with or without the possibility of resolving it. It is important to ‘unpack’ that definition to understand what it says, and equally importantly, what it does not say. This latter factor is important for whether or not terrorism impedes ‘development’.

‘Maligned’ term because one person’s terrorist might be another person’s freedom fighter. The global tendency is to ostracise ‘terrorists’: but what happens if they become the bona fide government of a territory. Recent history abounds with such examples, from Castro’s late 1950s Cuban revolution to the many African liberation movements (1950s-1970s), to Palestine’s PLO, and most recently, Taliban in Kabul. ‘Terrorist’ likely over-focuses on “unlawful” while ignoring an arguably legitimate end. Nonetheless, there are terrorists, like Boko Haram, criminals without a legitimate cause who turn against the very civilians they purport to fight for.

Development is primarily about human beings, and only secondarily about the contexts they live in – useful investments in bright city lights, sky scrapers, fast trains, etc. For the UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI), ‘development’ emphasises whether better health is drives longer, satisfying lives; whether literacy enlightens for health securing lifestyles; and incomes and livelihoods expand opportunities to enlightenment and health.

So, can, and does the activist, violent phase of terrorism deter development? Yes, it can and does; but it is impudence to blame Africa’s widespread low HDIs – lack of development - on terrorism. While many African countries currently host some civil unrest, few have a full-fledged terrorist conflicts. But many African countries’ political and economic classes perpetually terrorise their citizens, leeching them through extortionist taxes, while denying them the basics that foster improved health, literacy and incomes. Instead of using State resources to address the grievances undermining development and fostering unrest, some of the rich actually sponsor the violence as a camouflage for looting and raping of citizens and the economy.

So who is the terrorist?

I don't know much  about national and international capital markets, but I suppose they work on the basis of market dynamics and equilibria that determine returns to capital. The underlying issues must be: (i) Who has the investable capital? (ii) Where did they get it from? And (iii) Where can they get the greatest return.

‘Capital flight’ suggests illegal movements of monies involved; yet this is not necessarily so. The monies involved may be quite clean. So why do the money owners ship it abroad? The simple answers must be that the home market is unfavourable, especially if the money was acquired illegally or illegitimately, or that the money is genuine, but the market offers comparatively unattractive returns.

Social media reports claim a Kenyan public utility executive picked from USD 24,000pa public university lectureship, acquired USD 11.29mn worth of real estate and top-end vehicles during a single five-year tenure. If such are corruption proceeds, then it is reasonable to assume an internal network that has fleeced the utility of multiples of these amounts during the utility’s management musical chairs since the 1990s. Several such managers have been indicted, but cases remain undecided 30 years on, inducing further financial malfeasance. Local banking of such monies raises questions; hence capital flight.

But capital flight also occurs in the corporate sector, where companies simply decide to invest elsewhere. When monetary policies impose caps o  capital movement, then such corporates adopt methods such as transfer pricing between subsidiary and affiliated companies, and over invoicing whereby foreign prices are inflated. These practices enable shipping more money out of the country than is necessary for the official acquisition being undertaken, the surplus being ‘banked’ with an accomplice.

Some of these formal and informal money laundering transfers enable domestic tax evasion, and complicating any central bank’s money regulating role. While developing country money markets are not fully integrated into the global money markets, individual players on the global market are only too glad to receive extra money that strengthens their competitiveness.

The more domestic money markets espouse international money management standards, the more they should control against capital flight. However, domestic money markets cannot sustainably adopt international standards if the rest of the economy is not on board.  National elites legally banking in off shore accounts, attract others to do the same.

Interestingly, capital flight destinations - for flights sake as opposed to business investment, are often very small economies, such as Seychelles (population 100,000) and Mauritius.

The solution to capital flight is to make investment in the domestic market as attractive as, if not more attractive than investing abroad. This is not easy for a developing country economy; but it must try!

Whether African independence era leadership is a total failure depends on what yardstick is applied. A widely acceptable yardstick asks what such leaders aspired for at independence. Colonialism focused on effective expropriation, investing minimally only in functional Africans for expropriation, while ignoring the general human condition. Consequently, African nationalists’ 1950s campaigns for self-determination promised to eradicate poverty, ignorance and disease (PID).  Interestingly, UNDP’s 1990 Human Development Index (HDI) focused on the same three areas.

Into independence, some leaders fought the PID scourges; but others fanned their flames. Some pursued ‘socialism’ and failed to the delight of the West; others pursued ‘capitalism’ and failed, despite support from the West. The intellectual and visionary socialist Nkrumah failed for being… well, too intellectual and visionary at a time the soldiers wanted a ‘pragmatist’... The similarly intellectual but pragmatic Nyerere failed for trying to build socialism without socialists.

Conversely, vacuous Mobutu – with CIA – killed socialist Lumumba to perpetuate the imperial hegemony of Congolese mineral wealth, thereby stagnating African welfare. In Kenya, alleged Mau Mau fighter Kenyatta greatly admired the expansiveness of settler agriculture, became both a neo-settler and neo-Governor, turning his back on the Mau au and ordinary Kenyans. Both primitive accumulators to the hilt, Mobutu and Kenyatta defended, and were defended by western capitalist interests, never threatened by the sea of military coups surrounding them.

Africa has had coups by the hundreds, many fueled by youthful misadventure. Other coups had substantive grievances, and transformed countries. At the time of Gaddafi’s 2011 assassination, Libya’s HDI stood at 0.773 – 5^th highest in Africa, despite US-led embargoes against Libyan oil; but has dropped to 0.724 in 2021. Meanwhile, wealthy Congo DRC’s HDI has risen from 0.369 in 1990 to 0.480 in 2019.       

So the yardstick is important for gauging African failure or successes. Many failed for being non-starters; others for environmental reasons: Nyerere’s Tanzania paid a heavy price for the independences of Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.  Others still failed because of their ‘stomachs’. But the continent has myriad success stories over poverty, ignorance and disease: after all, the continental HDI average has risen from 0.42 in 2000 to 0.55 in 2019.

“Intra-regional multilateral frameworks” are simply ‘multilateral frameworks’ for a region, not continent or globe. The West champions efficient domination: why negotiate with, or as, 10 countries instead of a single regional body? The European Union is the benchmark for AfCFTA, NEPAD, and suchlike bodies. Europe played a sinister joke on Africa: their ‘tribes’ became ‘nations’ which became ‘states’. Emerging technology and peaceful co-existence led to coherent European ‘nation-states’ – the world wards notwithstanding. But in Africa, they divided-to-rule, deepening tribalism and even clannism within the irrational territories – soon independent states into the 1960s. The OAU noted the irrationalities: Nkrumah propsed an immediate United States of Africa (USAf) to swallow divisions; but Nyerere’s gradualism won: four cohesive regional bodies could eventually become Nkrumah’s USAf. Nkrumah’s neocolonialism warning was ignored: weak African states have been at the mercy of scavengers – the old and new colonisers, MNCs, religion, Hollywood, etc. – i.e. globalization! They meet at scavenger-sponsored conferences on ridding of scavengers using the same scavengers’ money…. Some Africans belong to 14 of the continent’s 39 regional organisations: https://ecdpm.org/talking-points/regional-organisations-africa-mapping-multiple-memberships/ When do they implement resolutions, alongside running their own governments? The original EEC of six is now of 30+ EU independent countries despite wide development disparities; but they are motivated by being European! The African countries lack of economic independence, enhancing Western reliance, such as through regional bodies whose operational costs are much higher than national public service budgets. Instead of striving for strength in unity, Africans squabble over which non-Africans should expropriate which of us. Thus Kenya is propping up the Somalia government against Al Shabaab; but Somalia has got an ICJ judgement to let Norway exploit its off-shore oil originally ‘shared’ with Kenya. How visionary was Nkrumah?

International law is basically European law, nothing less – despite the protestations of our highfalutin African legal scholars. But given globalisation, is a distinct law from European law necessary? African legal minds should just extract maximum concessions from European law, so that it is more accommodating for Africa. But why things ‘African’, when we are falling all over ourselves to be like the Europeans? We are so busy fighting each other on behalf of Western neo-colonisers: even within a single country, politicians X, Y and Z are surrogates for Western countries A, B and C respectively. In Neo-colonialism the last stage of Imperialism (1961), Kwame Nkrumah presaged exactly what is happening today. African countries are unwilling to build economic independence upon the political/flag independence of the heady 1960s. We have the Francophone Africa tragedy of 30 independent African countries umbilically tied to Paris some 60-odd years into ‘independence’. The Lusophones fled the Portuguese nest for the British nest; and the former British colonies religiously belong to the Commonwealth (which a Kenya cabinet minister is campaigning to be the Secretary General of). Many African countries cannot even pay membership fees to these international bodies, and beg Western countries to do so even as their Presidents drive in 20-car motorcades!! And the absurdity is that some Western founders have abandoned membership, paying for African memberships to do their bidding in such bodies! International law and related bodies are good in resolving private, corporate and state conflicts, just as national laws and related bodies protect against life being ‘nasty, brutish and short’. At OAU’s 1963 launch, African statesmen wisely kept the Berlin 1884 boundaries; otherwise the continent would probably still be fighting today about how many countries to have. But keeping those boundaries has had an adverse psychological effect, causing Africans to refuse to grow up. We complain of ‘imperialist’ ICJ and ICC, but still go there for the peanuts earned. Until we elevate our economic independence, it is a waste of time talking against international law institutions.