Remedying Africa's Self-propelled Corruption: The Missing Link

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses mechanisms and circumstances that facilitate and mitigate against corruption in African countries. We focus on governance indicators that strongly correlate with corruption and suggest that this phenomenon in Africa results from poor democratic practice enabled by asymmetrical concentration of power in governments and the rise of alliances between elites and corporate interests within neo-liberal economic systems. Countries with low corruption have processes in which citizens engage robustly in public governance and public accountability, suggesting that solutions to corruption can originate from within existing governance practices in Africa. We explore African countries that manage to mitigate corruption by reviewing processes of citizen participation in governance occurring through innovations in contemporary mechanisms of decision-making and reintegration of traditional practices in public governance institutions and processes. We argue that corruption in Africa is not a ‘cultural’ phenomenon, but rather that long-standing cultural practices provide innovations in governance that reduce corruption. This paper concludes that wider citizen engagement in public governance strengthens ‘voice and accountability’, balances power asymmetries in decision-making processes of governments, and promotes ‘socially conscious’ leaderships committed to greater transparency and accountability in government.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Introduced since 1990 by UNDP's HDI is a notion of development that measures progress in terms of economic as well as social, environmental, and good governance advancements, emphasising that:

Human development is a process of enlarging people's choices. The most critical ones are to lead a long and healthy life, to be educated and to enjoy a decent standard of living. Additional choices include political freedom, guaranteed human rights and self-respect – what Adam Smith called the ability to mix with others without being ‘ashamed to appear in public’. (1990, 10)

This paper compares HDI values of countries as broad indicators of progress or otherwise in development and corruption. In other words, higher the HDI value less is corruption and vice versa.

2. VeneKlasen and Miller's (2007) approach recognises that addressing power can be challenging. They argued that analysis of power in its different forms (‘power over’, ‘power with’, ‘power to', and ‘power with’) and levels (individual, collective, local, national, international) discloses real and abstract obstacles to democratic governance, especially in structural and ideological contexts. According to these authors, ‘Power over’ (which can be openly perceived, hidden through manipulation, or made invisible through ideological hegemony) consists in a ‘win–lose’ scenario that can result in the abuse of authority and corruption. ‘Power with’ denotes collective empowerment through the concentration and aggregation of skills or resources. ‘Power to’ relates to individual inner strengths, which are fundamental to building ‘Power with’. In turn, ‘Power with’ and ‘Power to’ are cornerstones for building power for social change. Then there is ‘Power within’, meaning the most intimate aspects of individual power. This last form of expression of power raises issues such as cultural and social factors that sometimes make social change endeavours unsustainable if they address constraints only in the public sphere at the expense of the private constraints. The logic of the categorisations of ‘power with’ and ‘power to’ and ‘power within’ appears to be in accordance with the consent theory of power, in which, according to Atack (2006, 87), power is based in the ‘submission, cooperation and obedience of the governed’ to rulers, whether consciously or not. This suggests that people have power when they are able to collaboratively support or remove support for a power holder in specific circumstances. However, Atack (2006) also highlights the limitations of that theory, arguing that because power is relational and dynamic phenomenon, other material (in Weber's standpoint) and ideological (Foucault's perspective) aspects of power can always influence the choices people make before they can oppose the ruling elites.

3. In order to ensure regional balance, countries have been selected from four main regional organisations of Africa, namely the Economic Community in Central African States, the East African Community, the Economic Community of West African States, and the Southern African Development Community. Depending on availability of information, efforts have been made to maintain consistency by using the same countries for the same indicators.

4. Traditional Village Assembly of Commoners where broad consultations are open to public.

5. Spaces of participation for citizens elected by Kgotla to identify problems, propose solutions and influence decision-making.

6. A public gathering for participatory budgeting.

7. Bulk of the narratives of this case example have been drawn from Bräutigam (2004) and World Public Sector Report UN (2008).

8. Botswana's example highlights the importance of re-invention and reintegration of traditional practices of community engagement – a core value of traditional Africa – into modern in public governance arrangements.