Constitutional Discourse and the Development of Structures for Sustainable Development in Africa

Abstract

At independence, Africans believed that they would be able to reconstruct the non-democratic state captured from the colonialists and develop more effective governance structures. The hope was that proper constitution making would provide the African people with the appropriate foundation to build transparent, accountable, and participatory governance structures. Unfortunately, the constitutional rules adopted at independence were weak, inefficient, and not particularly viable. In addition to the fact that they were easily subverted by interest groups seeking ways to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of the people, they allowed the new leaders to turn governmental structures into instruments of plunder to generate benefits for themselves. Like their colonial counterparts the neo-colonial governance structures were exploitative, undemocratic, and not designed to maximize wealth creation or popular participation. Instead of engaging their populations in proper constitution making in the post-independence period to reconstruct the neo-colonial state and design more effective laws and institutions, the new African leaders undertook opportunistic institutional reforms that significantly enhanced their ability to monopolize political power and the allocation of resources. What emerged were one-party political dictatorships that endangered peaceful coexistence and had a devastating effect on the creation of wealth, and subsequently on the alleviation of poverty. By the mid-1970s, government in many African countries had degenerated into a corrupt, patrimonial system in which civil servants regularly sold access to lucrative monopoly positions created by state regulations. As a result of changes that took place in the global political economy in the late 1980s. Africans now have another opportunity to engage in state reconstruction to provide themselves with more effective governance structures and economic systems that enhance the ability of entrepreneurs to create wealth. As the experiences of Benin and South Africa indicate, a bottom-up approach to constitution making that enfranchises the people and provides them with the facilities to participate effectively in the process should allow Africans to provide themselves with institutional arrangements that enhance peaceful coexistence and maximize the participation of entrepreneurs in wealth creation.