CIAO DATE: 05/2011
Volume: 62, Issue: 2
Spring/Summer 2009
Africa's Growth and Resilience in a Volatile World (PDF)
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
U ntil 2008, thanks to domestic policy reforms, external assistance and high commodity prices, most of the economies of sub-Saharan Africa experienced sustained and accelerating growth for over a decade. Poverty was declining, health and education indicators were improving—albeit from a low base—and there were signs that A frica’s HIV/A IDS prevalence rate had begun to decline. Then, in 2008, the continent was subjected to three major global shocks: a 50 percent increase in food prices, a surge in world oil prices that reached $140 a barrel and the financial meltdown and worldwide recession that is still running its course. The initial impact of these shocks was devastating, but African policymakers and the international community responded quickly and effectively, preventing a far worse outcome. Using external assistance, they scaled up existing safety net programs to cushion the poor from the food price shock, and for the most part avoided unproductive but politically compelling policies, such as price controls and export bans. Leaders of the affected countries also increased the share of high food prices accruing to Africa’s farmers. Similarly, many oil-importing countries passed on higher fuel prices to consumers, avoiding the temptation to increase poorly targeted and often regressive subsidies. Finally, when the price of oil plummeted, Africa’s largest oil exporters were able to withstand the shock because they had been using a conservative reference price per barrel in their budgets and saving the rest. As the global recession worsens, the coming months or years will be extremely difficult for Africa. However, the combination of domestic policy reforms and prudent foreign assistance that enabled Africa to experience economic growth over the past decade and manage the food, fuel and financial shocks thus far, can, if replicated, enable the continent to minimize the impact on its poor and return to a path of self-sustaining growth
Africa: The United States and China Court the Continent (PDF)
David H. Shinn
The United States and China are the two most important bilateral, external actors in Africa today. While the United States wields more influence in most of Africa’s fifty-three countries, China has surpassed it in a number of states and is challenging it in others. Both countries look to Africa as an increasingly significant source of raw materials, especially oil. China, more than the United States, views Africa from a long-term strategic perspective. Both countries seek political and economic support in international forums from African countries, which constitute more than a quarter of the membership of the United Nations. The interests of the United States and China in Africa are more similar than dissimilar. There will inevitably be some competition over access to African natural resources and political support, but ther
African Solutions to An International Problem: Arms Control and Disarmament in Africa (PDF)
Guy Lamb, Dominique Dye
I n February 1994, Robert Kaplan published a highly controversial article in the influential Atlantic Monthly titled, “The Coming Anarchy.” Kaplan prophesized that a combination of “scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism and disease” would swiftly undermine the social fabric of the world we know. 1 Africa, and especially West Africa, was depicted as one of the key ground zero sites. Kaplan’s article has been widely read and debated by both academics and policymakers. One and a half decades later, Kaplan’s doomsday predictions are yet to be realized. States and citizens, in Africa and elsewhere, remain challenged by the problems identified in “The Coming Anarchy,” but the prospect of a continentwide social meltdown seems an unlikely short- to medium-term scenario. In Africa, some of the conditions of human security have arguably improved. In particular, there has been a quantifiable decrease in the occurrence of major armed conflict. Between 1998 and 2002, Africa was the region with the highest number of major armed conflicts compared to the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. 2 Africa experienced on average eight distinct major armed conflicts each year during this five-year period. However, between 2003 and 2006 the number of major armed conflicts decreased to three per annum; in 2007, only one major armed conflict was observed in Africa. 3
Feature: Five Faces of African Innovation and Entrepreneurship (PDF)
A frica’s influence on Western culture has been celebrated for centuries, yet the continent has long been seen as requiring outside intervention to fuel its progress. Today, however, the growing number of high-profile African entrepreneurs across numerous sectors and industries, and the increasing visibility of African leaders in the international community, are among the most tangible illustrations of the continent’s potential. The Journal of International Affairs has chosen five influential African entrepreneurs whose vision and originality exemplify the rapid growth taking place today in Africa. They have made major, even unprecedented innovations in their respective fields, and have invited excitement about the continent’s 21st century potential. Many of those profiled below found success by developing an understanding of multiple sectors and building productive relationships between them, as seen in Mo Ibrahim’s encouragement of good governance through private sector philanthropy and Andrew Rugasira’s message about the lessons of small business growth in cultivating Africa’s human rights developmen
Financial Diplomacy and the Credit Crunch: The Rise of Central Banks (PDF)
Nicholas Bayne
Economic diplomacy can be defined as the method by which states conduct their external economic relations. It embraces how they make decisions domestically, how they negotiate internationally and how the two processes interact. Economic diplomacy has been transformed in the last two decades with the end of the Cold War and the advance of globalization. Its subject matter has become much wider and more varied and it has penetrated more deeply into domestic politics—no longer being limited to measures imposed at the border. Internationally, it engages a far larger range of countries, including new rising powers like China, India and Brazil. Yet the relative power and resources of governments have been shrinking, so that they often seem to be trying to do more with less.1
Governance and Leadership in Africa: Measures, Methods and Results (PDF)
Robert I. Rotberg
G overnance is performance—the delivery of high quality political goods to citizens by governments of all kinds. In Africa, as everywhere else, those political goods are security and safety, rule of law, participation and human rights, sustainable economic opportunity and human development. The Ibrahim Index of African Governance, created at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, evaluates forty-eight sub-Saharan African countries according to fifty-seven variables. The results of this massive measurement exercise produce overall rankings of governance attainment, plus rankings for each of the five categories of political goods and each of the fifty-seven variables. Yet, the purpose of this Index is not to rate, but to diagnose. The Index is a diagnostic tool for civil society, donors and governments so that performance can be enhanced and the lives and outcomes of Africans can be strengthened. Improving African governance is the goal.
Kenya's Unfinished Agendas (PDF)
Jacqueline M. Klopp
K enya is a critically important East African country at a crossroads. In the coming years, it will either chart a way through to democratic reform and state building, or it will join the ranks of the so-called collapsed or failed states. Much hinges on which way Kenya moves: the fate of 37 million Kenyans hangs in the balance. In the best-case scenario, Kenya moves toward greater prosperity and freedom and becomes a genuine force for transformation in Africa in the 21st century. With the largest and most dynamic economy in the region, key infrastructure and institutions of higher education, a vibrant press and civil society, political space and abundant human capital, creativity and entrepreneurship, it has many resources with which to achieve this future.
Maritime Piracy in East Africa (PDF)
James Kraska, Brian Wilson
More than 200 years ago, just as the United States was developing into a nation, corsair piracy challenged the ability of the country to conduct international trade throughout the Mediterranean Sea. While the Barbary threat was defeated, piracy continues to thrive and has become a feature of the contemporary age. Now, pirates operating off the Somali coast represent a destabilizing force in the region, and their attacks wreak havoc on world shipping markets at the very time the industr y is suffering from economic collapse. A lthough piracy in the Horn of A frica has picked up throughout the past five years, 2008 was an especially remarkable year. In 2008, Somali pirates attacked more than one hundred vessels in the Gulf of Aden and western Indian Ocean. The audacity and scope of this piracy campaign is unprecedented in the modern age. Twenty thousand ships transit the Gulf of Aden annually and in 2007 about 6,500 tankers, carrying 12 percent of the world’s daily oil supply, used the route. 1 This strategic area links trade between the east and west through the neighboring Strait of Bab el-Mandeb and into the Suez Canal. Piracy also occurs in Southeast Asia, off the African west coast and in the Caribbean, but the explosion in the number and scope of incidents in the Horn of Africa has galvanized world attention. Increasingly, Somali pirates seize and hold for ransom seafarers and valuable cargo. Among the take are thirtythree Russian armored tanks, 2 million barrels of crude oil valued at $100 million and tankers full of bulk chemicals. 2
Obama and Africa: Matching Expectations with Reality (PDF)
Princeton N. Lyman, Kathryn A. Robinette
T he election of Barack Obama as president of the United States has aroused expectations around the world, but nowhere as much as in Africa. Obama inherits a record of achievement on the continent from George W. Bush that w ill be hard to match, if not exceed. He will also be far more heavily engaged elsewhere in the world than in Africa, with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the nuclear threat from Iran, problems encompassing Russia and the worldwide economic crisis. Yet, Obama has singular potential to make his mark on Africa as neither his immediate nor earlier predecessors were able to do—that is, to carry his message of personal and political responsibility, which was emphasized in his inaugural address to African leaders. In addition, he can help empower the institutions of Africa’s governments and civil society that can demand accountability, service and democracy where Africa has lagged and been held back. These steps will make American aid and trade programs—on which he can draw from an impressive Bush legacy, and which he must still improve—all the more effective.
Power and Pressure: African Media and the Extractive Sector (PDF)
Anya Schiffrin
J ournalism in Africa has come far in recent decades. The decline of one-party dictatorships, which traditionally kept a grip on the press, has brought about rapid changes. 1 The number of media outlets has expanded and in many countries, such as South Africa and Nigeria, the press is now known for being lively and outspoken. The old days in which the government controlled the one broadcaster, strictly licensed just a few newspapers and kept a tight grip on newsprint allocation are gone in most countries. 2 From having a few dozen media outlets at the end of the colonial period, Africa now has hundreds. Across the continent, small newspapers and radio stations have sprung up, many with just a few thousand listeners and tiny staffs. The rapid expansion of new technology also bodes well for journalistic freedom. Online publications also allow wider participation and the growth of citizen journalism, which can boost governance and promote transparency
Religion, Social Capital and Development in the Sahel: The Niyass Tijaniyya in Niger (PDF)
Shailly Barnes
R eligion is not often pursued as a source of engagement in the international discourse on development. While faith-based organizations have received a greater audience and exerted greater influence in the past few years under the Bush administration, it is still uncommon for international development agencies to incorporate religious loyalties, insights and communities into their regional or national agendas. This pattern of development practice grew, perhaps, from an attempt to pursue a secular agenda that offended none and therefore was acceptable to all. However, in neglecting the religiosity of the poorest of the poor, the development agenda fails to acknowledge and learn from some of the most innovative, influential and sustainable development actors: the religious leadership of the world’s poor
The Africa Union: Pitfalls and Prospects for Uniting Africa (PDF)
Wafula Okumu
A s the African Union (AU) moves toward its tenth anniversary in 2012, it is drawing a great deal of attention to its handling of mounting crises on the continent. Across the continent, the AU is faced w ith crises that test its commitment and capability to fulfill the ambitious agenda it adopted at its formation in July 2002. This agenda includes the promotion of peace, stability, human rights, democracy, good governance and sustainable development. Among the motivating factors for the formation of the Union was to provide Africa with a platform and voice to survive and benefit from the wave of globalization. The AU, as stated in its Constitutive Act, was A frica’s response to “the multifaceted challenges that confront our continent and peoples in the light of the social, economic and political changes taking place in the world.” 1 It was concocted as a vehicle for accelerating “political and socio-economic integration of the continent” and for establishing “the necessary conditions which enable the continent to play its rightful role in the global economy and in international negotiations.” 2
The Glass Fortress: Zimbabwe's Cyber-Guerilla Warfare (PDF)
Clapperton Mavhunga
T he Maxim gun and the Martini-Henry rifle ushered anglophone Africa into 20th century colonialism. The Cold War, in turn, presented a moment for black political elites to acquire weapons (the AK-47 in particular) with which to define and present themselves as African nationalists fighting—with all the material ramifications of this word—to end colonial rule. Could information technology—specifically radio, the Internet and cell phones—be the Martini-Henry, Maxim and AK-47 of the 21st century? Zimbabwe offers an example of the way ordinary citizens in Africa are using these information technologies to express and demand genuine individual freedoms. Words and information are a kinetic process. To control words is to control mobility; when mobility is frozen, so too is information. This essay examines the technologies that enable and transform the mobility of words into weapons of resistance—by the state against its own citizens and by citizens against the state
The International Criminal Court's Case Against the President of Sudan: A Critical Look (PDF)
Mahmood Mamdani
O n 14 July 2008, after much advanced publicity and fanfare, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, applied for a warrant of arrest against the president of Sudan, Omar Hassan Ahmad alBashir, on charges that included conspiracy to commit genocide along w ith other war crimes. 1 The application charges President al-Bashir with the polarization of ethnic groups into two broadly racialized groups (Arab and Zurga or black), followed by a violent conflict from 2003 to 2005, leading to the ethnic cleansing of Zurga ethnic groups (in particular, the Fur, the Masalit and the Zaghawa) from their traditional tribal lands or dars, and a deceptively non-violent process whereby those forcibly expelled were left to die, either in the desert or from malnutrition, rape or torture, leading to “slow deaths” in the internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. The prosecutor argues that this process has gone on for five years, from 2003 to the time of the publication of the application in 2008.
U.S. Foreign Assistance to Africa: Securing America's Investment for Lasting Development (PDF)
Katherine J. Almquist
S ince 2001, the United States has dramatically increased its commitment to development in Africa and has transformed the way it is implemented. In the last eight years, U.S. foreign assistance to sub-Saharan Africa managed by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has increased by $5.5 billion, or 340 percent. 1 An additional $3.8 billion has been provided through Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) compacts, ten of which have been signed with sub-Saharan African countries since 2004. 2 The United States is currently on track to meet its 2005 G-8 commitment to double aid to Africa again by 2010. 3 This commitment of financial resources by the United States represents former President George W. Bush’s vision of using America’s power to help Africans improve their own lives, build their own nations and transform their own future
An Interview with Patrick Awuah (PDF)
P atrick Awuah is the founder and president of Ashesi University, a private liberal arts college located in Accra, Ghana. He was born in Ghana but left in the mid-1980s to pursue an education in the United States, earning a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College and a master of business administration from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. He later earned an honorary doctorate from Swarthmore College. After eight years working as a program manager and engineer for the Microsoft Corporation in Seattle, Awuah returned to his home country to found Ashesi University, currently the sole accredited coeducational liberal arts college in West Africa. Awuah solicited massive financial support from the private sector, particularly American corporate donors, like Microsoft. Beginning with a pilot class of thirty students in 2002, Ashesi University now has 352 students, 87 percent of whom are Ghanaian, and 50 percent of whom receive financial aid. Awuah has earned international acclaim for his commitment to creating a model for quality private education in Africa. He spoke to Emily Gouillart of the Journal of International Affairs about the experience of founding and building Ashesi University, the future of education in Africa and the importance of ethics in curriculum building.
Long Review Essays (PDF)
Elizabeth Sperbee, Peter van der Windt, Radha Webley
Since the mid-1990s, China has rapidly expanded its engagement with African states. Study of Sino-African relations has subsequently begun to burgeon. In China into Africa: Trade, Aid and Influence, Robert Rotberg’s multinational slate of authors introduce key issues in this literature from a variety of perspectives. The result is a volume worth reading cover to cover. A sometimes redundant, sometimes contradictory assemblage, China into Africa nevertheless provides a fascinating introduction not only to a variety of issues at stake in Sino-African relations, but also, necessarily, to the issues at stake in the study of those relations.