Reform In Africa Research Articles

New media–new voices: satirical representations of Nigeria’s socio-politics in Ogas at the top

ABSTRACTNew media are increasingly providing spaces and opportunities for media houses and activist groups engaged in socio-political reform in Africa. In Nigeria, social media are becoming platforms for communicating messages of resistance against oppressive political and exploitative economic power structures. This study analyzed Ogas at the top (OATT), an online puppetry series by Buni TV, as a way of examining new platforms and message content in Nigeria’s rapidly changing media sphere. Relying on semiotics and critical discourse analysis perspectives, the study analyzed select episodes of the series, to gauge how producers constructed powerful visual and linguistic messages to boldly satirize social injustices perpetrated by Nigeria’s political elites.

Public Sector Reforms in Africa: A Collection of Essays

This paper provides a compendium of public sector reform in Africa in an analytical and prescriptive manner. It examines the idea of reform and public service reform in Africa up till its recent framework, and showcases institutional framework for making reform, as well as studies on reform experiences and relevant information on best practices, challenges and strategies for improving public sector management performance. This paper employed stratified sampling technique. Africa was stratified alongside its five (5) regions, thereby selecting one (1) country from each of the regions. It relied extensively on secondary sources of data by drawing from documentary sources, such as: books, journals, pub­lications and reports which give official views of reform initiatives and processes in the five (5) selected countries. The generated qualitative data were utilized with the aid of content analysis. This paper revealed the three (3) prominent phases of reform in Africa vis-a-vis its objectives, assumptions, features, strategies, achievements and challenges. It therefore concluded that organizational mechanisms such as decentralization, privatization and performance management should be adopted as reformative measures with a view to improving the responsiveness of governments to public concerns; improving the quality of public goods and services; increasing the efficiency of service delivery; as well as promoting accountability and ethical values.

Tightly Packed: Disciplinary Power, the UNODC, and the Container Control Programme in Dakar

Abstract:This article uses the lens of disciplinary power to analyze the North–South relationships in efforts to govern drug trafficking in Senegal. Disciplinary surveillance shapes the activities of anti-trafficking units through repetitive examination, correction, and persuasion. These practices produce forms of resistance to the ways in which interdiction occurs, which implicate elites in the country. The result of constant international correction, and subsidiary actor resistance, is a frustrated law enforcement team. The argument deepens the literature on police reform in Africa, acknowledging the effects of international discipline on policing agents, while maintaining that immediate political settings heavily constrain disciplinary techniques and their internalizing effects.

Health financing issues and reforms in Africa

Achieving universal health coverage is one of the overarching goals of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. Health financing is an essential health system component contributory to this goal. In recent years, many African countries initiated health financing reforms to follow the path to universal health coverage. This paper reviews and synthesizes common health financing issues, reforms and challenges in Africa. The paper presents an analytical overview and the ways forward to make health systems financing more equitable, efficient and resilient through universal health coverage oriented reforms in Africa.

Misguided and Misdiagnosed: The Failure of Decentralization Reforms in the DR Congo

Abstract:The DR Congo embarked upon decentralization reforms in 2006 to improve governance and accountability, undermine predation, corruption, and personal rule, bring government closer to the people, and promote local development. As of 2014, despite some regional variations, Congolese decentralization had instead increased the degree to which the state extracts the resources and incomes of its citizens. It had also fostered provincial centralization at the expense of local governments, produced largely unaccountable provinces governing with little transparency, and unleashed self-serving provincial elites. After providing original empirical evidence for these claims, this article suggests that decentralization was thwarted by the failure of formal reforms to affect informal ruling institutions and by an erroneous diagnosis of Congo’s governance failures that singled out the abuse of elites without identifying the generalized nature of the instrumentalization of sovereignty by officeholders at all levels of the state. The article concludes by using Congo’s experience to illustrate important flaws in decentralization reforms in Africa.

Climate change, sustainable water management and institutional adaptation in rural sub-Saharan Africa

Much current work on climate adaptation options vis-a-vis water management in rural sub-Saharan Africa has tended to focus more on technological and infrastructural alternatives and less on institutional alternatives. Yet, vulnerability to climate variability and change in these contexts is a function not just of biophysical outcomes but also of institutional factors that can vary significantly at relatively finer scales. This paper seeks to contribute towards closing this gap by examining institutional options for sustainable water management in rural SSA in the context of climate change and variability. It explores challenges for transforming water-related institutions and puts forward institutional alternatives towards adapting to increasingly complex conditions created by climate change and variability. The paper suggests revisiting the Integrated Water Resources Management approach which has dominated water institutional debates and reforms in Africa over the recent past, towards actively adopting resilience and adaptive management lenses in crafting water institutional development initiatives.

Data protection and law reform in Africa: a systematic or flawed process?

In the last decade or so Africa embarked on data protection legislation reforms. These reforms have so far generated a handful of legislation in some African countries while leaving draft bills on privacy pending in others. At the same time regional economic communities RECs in Africa as well as the African Union have been drawn in the data privacy reform processes. The main objective of data protection reforms at supra-national level is to ensure harmonisation of data protection policies so that international transfer of personal data is not impeded. This article critically assesses the data protection reforms in Africa and offers the overall implications of these processes to data protection practices in the continent.

Embodying the Modern: Neoliberalism, NGOs, and the Culture of Human Rights Practices in Nigeria

IntroductionThis article is my attempt to unravel the growing influence of NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) in Nigeria. There are two important elements in mapping NGOs in Nigeria today. First, the culture of NGO is emblematic of the ways in which neoliberal economic and political reforms in Africa, and particularly in Nigeria, change the face of the state, thereby creating a new space that prioritizes NGOs as a better alternative to the state. Second, by creating new spaces for NGOs to thrive, neoliberalism incorporates NGO leaders into the class of elitism. Politics is and continues to be considered the domain of elite politicians who have been in control of the political process in postcolonial Africa. NGO leaders have historically seen these politicians as standing in the way of economic and political development of Africa and Nigeria. Unfortunately, this disdain for political leaders has led NGO practitioners, who are now a part of the new elite class, to present themselves as non-political and non-partisan. This decision leaves political participation and contests for elections in the hands of the elite politicians NGO leaders oppose. Such decisions by NGO leaders ignore the possibility of using their new elite status as a mechanism for real change.The combination of these two elements has continually produced outcomes such as economic and political deprivation for many citizens in ways that have promoted NGOs and CSOs (civil society organizations) to the status of rescue organizations. One such outcome is that NGOs have become one of the fastest growing industries in Nigeria. They cater to the needs of thousands of unemployed youths by employing them in such as periodic election monitoring or regular reporting of human rights violations to the transnational networks of human rights organizations in the global north.Illustrative of these are the activities of CLEEN Foundation (formerly known as Center for Law Enforcement Education in Nigeria), and CISLAC (Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Center). Both CLEEN and CISLAC emerged in Nigeria as a result of promotion of neoliberal economic and political in the post-Cold War era by international financial institutions (e.g., the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Paris and London Clubs). While these two organizations are not alone in promoting this particular set of practices, mapping the political trajectory of its leaders provides a clear understanding of how neoliberalism promotes apolitical CSOs in ways that create new sites of power.This article also examines the emergence of NGOs in Nigeria through the location of their proliferation within a transnational economy shaped by the dominant international capitalist system. This system privileges the idea that a free market economy is deductively inscribed in the freedom of citizens, but the citizens' ability to actively participate in the affairs of the nation-state is inhibited by state (such as the violation of human rights, illegal detention, and the denial of access to land, livelihood, and resources) that negate neoliberal practices. This idea further suggests that private ownership of capital should trump the public good. Central to this idea is the notion that the state-already seen as oppressive and a locus of rights violations-does not have the capacity to mold citizens. In contrast, CSOs and NGOs are considered to be important in the construction of a new society that embodies modern ideas about participation, respect for human rights, and the molding of good citizenship. I examine what I call the rearticulation of praxis and reordering of practices by looking at the changing meaning of CSOs and NGOs in most academic literature, and suggest that there is a need to focus on how the particularities of Nigeria dictate how CSOs and NGOs shape practices.Finally, I look at the work of CLEEN and CISLAC to show how they have reshaped national discourses about power and social inequalities in ways that feed into neoliberal discourses of power and social structures. …

Ugandan privacy bill: a cosmetic tokenism?

The last two decades have witnessed privacy law reforms in Africa. Yet there is no privacy legislation in any of the countries in the East African Community (EAC) comprising of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. At the moment Kenya and Tanzania have draft data privacy bills. Recently Uganda has issued a draft privacy bill following suit to Kenya and Tanzania. This article analyses the Data Protection and Privacy Bill 2014. The conclusion that is made here is that the Ugandan proposed privacy bill is the weakest of the existing draft bills in the sub-region and will remain a cosmetic tokenism if it is not significantly improved.

Iron Houses in the Tropical Heat: Decentralization Reforms in Africa and their Consequences

Decentralization reforms introduced to Africa have not always delivered the intended outcomes. Through interaction with the broader historical, political, social and economic context, reforms seem to have engendered political consequences beyond decentralization itself. Most of the literature on decentralization and development emphasizes questions of institutional design and policy, but here we expand the focus of analysis and incorporate the harder-to-pin-down political patterns marking the workings of decentralization in Africa. Through the case-studies of Ghana, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Ethiopia and Uganda we seek to connect the debates on development with the scholarly literatures on comparative federalism, comparative decentralization and local democracy. The conclusion that emerges is that no magic formula which can turn countries into peaceful, stable and prosperous democracies overnight exists. And, importing formal institutions without regard to the local historical, political, social and economic context risks leaving us with elegant but dysfunctional iron houses in the tropical heat.

Emerging Issues in Public Sector Reforms in Africa: An Assessment of Ghana and Nigeria

Public sector reform (PSR) has been quite popular in Africa and in recent years, several African countries have implemented far-reaching governance and public service reform measures. The aim of this article is to consider the historical development of Public Sector Reform in Africa and the philosophy behind the ubiquitous wave of reform in the continent. The article discovers that those reform measures have so far gone through three different phases to promote and/or accelerate the revitalization of the public service. It identifies some major challenges that account for the monumental failure of PSR. Finally, the paper offers suggestions on how African countries can free themselves from the doldrums of current PSR. This article will not only broaden the frontier of knowledge in the field of public administration but also address the present and on-going reality of public sector reforms in the West African sub region. This study uses a ‘Literature Survey’ in examining the issue in question.

‘Hands off my constitution’: Constitutional reform and the workings of democracy in Mali

ABSTRACTConstitutions in Africa are often considered fragile. Mali is an example of both constitutional crisis and constitutional durability. While Mali was upheld as a democratic model, the 2012 military coup might lead one to argue that Mali's recent history reflects constitutional weakness. However, the swift reinstatement of the constitution, popular commitment to its preservation, and attempts to pursue the post-coup transition in a constitutional manner all illustrate the domestic and international legitimacy of Mali's 1992 constitution. This article analyses the process of the proposed Malian constitutional referendum that, though constitutional in itself, contributed to the March 2012 overthrow of President Touré. It argues that the history of participatory constitutionalism in Mali contributed to the movement against the referendum. Constitutional reform is a necessity for an enduring constitution and this article sheds light on constitutional reform in states with weak legislatures, and illustrates the process of reform and the political divide that surrounded it in Mali. It provides a unique analysis of the crisis in Mali while at the same time making a contribution to our understanding of constitutionalism and constitutional reform in Africa.

Civil Society and Constitutional Reform in Africa: A Case of Ghana

This paper examines, especially at such a momentous time when the country anticipates a significant constitutional overhaul, the role, both subtle and otherwise, that Civil Society groups have played in the drive towards the consolidation of democracy and constitutionalism in Ghana. It highlights the particular configuration of social and political forces mobilized to stake a claim in the current attempt at the titivation of constitutional/democratic rule in Ghana. Under scrutiny equally, is how the afore-determined configuration could prove to be intertwined with the nation’s international fate as it struggles to create a niche as Africa’s one true democracy. Ghana’s constitutional jurisprudence has long laboured under the perky shadow of the oft-repeated epiphanic assertion by its Supreme Court that “a written Constitution such as ours is not an ordinary Act of Parliament. It embodies the will of a people. It also mirrors their history. Account, therefore, needs to be taken of it as a landmark in a people’s search for progress. It contains within it their aspirations and their hopes for a better and fuller life. The Constitution has its letter of the law. Equally, the Constitution has its spirit. It is the fountain-head for the authority which each of the three arms of government possesses and exercises. It is a source of strength. It is a source of power. The executive, the legislature and the judiciary are created by the Constitution. Their authority is derived from the Constitution. Their sustenance is derived from the Constitution. Its methods of alteration are specified. In our peculiar circumstances, these methods require the involvement of the whole body politic of Ghana. Its language, therefore, must be considered as if it were a living organism capable of growth and development Indeed, it is a living organism capable of growth and development, as the body politic of Ghana itself is capable of growth and development.”Within the last decade, the need for a novel, reinforced and legitimate approach to tackling developmental issues has led to an awakening to the need to better free up national access trajectories to decision-making and civil society participation. Indeed recourse to rhetoric such as “constitutionalism’ and “good governance” now taking hold, reflects increasing recognition that developmental issues ought to receive cross-partisan, cross sectorial input; as well as the consolidation of public participation rights in constitutional decision-making towards measuring, analysing, and promoting more open and transparent governance. Yet civil society participation in the growth of constitutionalism in Ghana has been a tale of reconciled inconsistencies. Lacking a clear mandate, originality and often at wits end to assert that it is unsullied by existing partisan fault-lines and distribution of power, the post-colonial civil society machinery in Ghana has been condemned to reaction rather than proaction. On the other hand, civil society groups have since independence been navigating the torturous crevices between legitimacy and pragmatism and have ensured that the connection between constitutional governance and society has not being constructed in terms of a self-interested and atomistic consumption of legal rights but rather in an integrated social account of legitimation through active identification with, and support for, the structures which produce legal norms. Be that as it may, there is a tacit national consciousness to the effect that civil society activism remains yet the best alternative to bridging the gap between society and the structures of governance and to providing an intermediating civic sphere vital to a renewed national democratic dialogue and processes erected on collective will-formation.

Bibliography

This bibliography lists items noted between January and March 2015. Ajayi, Ibi.Capital flight from Africa: Causes, effects and policy issues. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 436 pp. £60. Bachelard, Jerome.Governance reform in Africa: International and domestic pressures and counter-pressures. (Abingdon and New York, NY: Routledge, 2014). xiii + 242 pp. £85. Decker, Alicia C. and Arrington, Andrea L. Africanizing Democracies: 1980–present. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015). xii + 100 pp. £10.99. McCall, Grant S. Before modern humans: New perspectives on the African Stone Age. (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2014). 391 pp. £68.95. Mabweazara, Hayes Mawindi (ed.). Online journalism in Africa: Trends, practices and emerging cultures. (Abingdon and New York, NY: Routledge, 2014). x + 273 pp. $140. Röhrs, Stefanie and Smythe, Dee (eds). In search of equality: Women, law and society in Africa. (Cape Town: UCT Press, 2014). xx + 252 pp. R275. Saylor, Ryan. State building in boom times: Commodities and coalitions in Latin America and Africa. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014). x + 244 pp. £32.99.

Why on Earth Should Foreign Banks Invest in Africa's Financial Services Sector? Evidence from Financial Multinationals in Ghana

While sub-Saharan African countries have been able to attract some degree of resource-seeking foreign direct investment (FDI) due to their abundant natural resources, financial FDI inflows have proved to be elusive for the region, in spite of the widespread financial-sector adjustment programs that offer attractive incentive packages for financial multinational corporations (MNCs). Literature surrounding the determinants of FDI inflows has mainly focused on manufacturing and real production activity. We analyzed the root causes of the weak administrative and institutional framework in Africa's banking industry, using Ghana as a case in point. Focusing on two financial MNCs as case studies, this article validates the significance of a thorough qualitative investigation in evaluating the explanations as to why most foreign banks do not invest in sub-Saharan Africa and why the few that do have relatively insignificant operations. The study also reveals that despite the far-reaching reforms, there are several structural constraints and deficiencies placed on financial MNCs that affect the size of the business they can conduct and their future investment decisions. One of the major issues prior to the financial-sector reforms in Africa was disintegration, and the restructuring was not designed to create an attractive location for foreign capital; hence, the low financial FDI inflows to Ghana in particular and Africa in general.

Youth uprising and the quest for political reform in Africa

Frustrated by decades of authoritarian rule, political repression, economic mismanagement, poverty, soaring unemployment and other related injustices, the youth in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya rose up against the state, while Algeria and Morocco narrowly escaped the events of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. This quest for political reform is an indication of a great collective shift that has the potential to reverberate throughout the African continent. However, to what extent can the youth succeed in bringing about the much-desired transition to democracy? This article focuses on the North African youth uprising and the quest for political reform in Africa. It examines the core issues of the youth uprising and the challenges to the attainment of political reform. A youth uprising can lead to genuine political reform if the major challenges in building new democratic forms of governance which can address economic disparity, protection of human rights, justice and security, can be overcome.

Government and Governance Reforms in Africa

Several African countries have implemented reforms in higher education governance in recent years. Many of these reforms were because of expansion and declining quality. Efforts have been made to reduce dependence on the state and increase market forces into the higher education equation.

Tax and Expenditure Reforms in Africa: An Overview

Taxation is recognised as being able to affect economic growth, poverty and inequality. In Africa, taxation is an instrument that can be used to promote development. Like other countries, African governments have undertaken tax reforms aimed at increasing tax revenues, but at the same time reducing trade taxes and high marginal tax rates. Reforms include introducing broad-based consumption taxes, simplified tax design and improved tax administration. Emerging ideas include the ‘optimal tax policy’, which states that all taxation distorts market incentives, and reforms should be driven by the aim of minimising these distortions. A challenging aspect of a ‘growth friendly’ tax reform agenda would be how to ensure that increasing taxation does not erode the small existing tax base by inducing further distortions. The three papers in this special edition look at tax reform in relation to investment, to tax evasion and economic growth and also to the equity and efficiency trade-offs. Tax reforms are found to be successful in modestly increasing GDP growth, while reducing poverty and inequality. These outcomes are driven by the positive impacts that expenditures on infrastructure, operations and maintenance have on total factor productivity. Improved legal and regulatory frameworks, coupled with transparent and accountable institutions in Africa, and well-developed social welfare expenditure architecture capable of recycling revenues back to poor individuals will help improve tax collection and development. Without these features, the tax reform agenda would likely have almost no impact on the African economies.

Economic and Political Reform in Africa: Anthropological Perspectives by Peter D. Little.

Economic and Political Reform in Africa: Anthropological Perspectives by Peter D. Little.

Ugandan Privacy Bill: A Cosmetic Tokenism?

The last two decades have witnessed privacy law reforms in Africa. Yet there is no privacy legislation in any of the countries in the East African Community (EAC) comprising of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. At the moment Kenya and Tanzania have draft data privacy bills. Recently Uganda has issued a draft privacy bill following suit to Kenya and Tanzania. This article analyses the Data Protection and Privacy Bill 2014. The conclusion that is made here is that the Ugandan proposed privacy bill is the weakest of the existing draft bills in the sub-region and will remain a cosmetic tokenism if it is not significantly improved.