Africa can teach development experts
By Iqbal Z. Quadir | Published: 07 July, 2009
By Iqbal Z. Quadir
For decades, experts have been trying to teach Africans how to develop. Yet Africa has much to teach them about accountability and economic progress. Applying what I call the “European” and “American” models to African achievements illustrates two ways that dispersion of power has led to some progress in Africa.
“Many African countries have made notable strides after decades of suffering from a crippling concentration of power”
In the “European” model of dispersion of power, accountability was achieved over centuries as citizens gained power from a narrow elite. Through innovations in technologies and commerce, people were able to widen the base of power to demand checks and balances. In the “American” model, property owners started out on equal footing and organised their democracies together. In both models, innovations and entrepreneurship preserved the dispersed power structure no matter how it was initially achieved.
In accordance with the “European” model, many Africa countries have made notable strides after decades of suffering from a crippling concentration of power and its ensuing lack of accountability. Such concentration of power has its origin in the colonial legacy, but is exacerbated when mineral wealth or foreign aid bolsters state power.
African entrepreneurs have successfully capitalised on cascading prices of digital technologies and brought widespread use of mobile phones, internet applications and media products to the doorsteps of many Africans. Local entrepreneurs have built services and infrastructure based on ordinary people’s ability to pay. Productivity gains and higher incomes resulting from these services mean that people can afford them. The profitability of these companies invites competition, which lowers costs for consumers and leads to even greater innovations as competitors try to outdo one another. And competition prevents abuses.
Innovations can empower Africans. Entrepreneurship and innovation are beginning to align the interests of the individual users, the companies providing the services, the governments collecting taxes on those services, and the countries increasing their aggregate incomes. With the emergence of broader empowerment, narrow interests are beginning to be mitigated.
Indeed there has been some perceptible progress in accountability and economic growth. Annual GDP growth has reached 5 percent in many African countries. While some of this GDP growth can be attributed to higher commodity prices, it is notable that even non resource-intensive countries experienced 2.5 percent growth from 1995-2007. This may indicate the beneficial effects of IT-based innovations such as mobiles.
As with foreign aid, when revenue from commodities goes to state coffers, one would expect a greater concentration of state power and less transparency. However, transparency is on the rise in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to a 2009 Freedom House report nearly 70 percent of Sub-Saharan countries are rated free or partly-free, up from 40 percent in 1980.
Second, in accordance with the “American” model, Africa can boast of Botswana’s dispersion of power and climate of accountability. Transparency International ranks Botswana higher than Italy and South Korea. Botswana’s poor soil and low rainfall produced minimal agricultural surplus, limiting the power of tribal chiefs who, consequently, ruled mostly by reason and consensus. These inhospitable conditions failed to attract European interests, but cattle could tolerate them. At independence in 1966, there were 40,000 cattle owners in Botswana. A broad coalition of cattle owners became the ruling party.
While a single sector seems to have captured the state, in reality the state was anchored in the economic realities of the country. Most importantly, accountability arose out of this context. Tribal and geographical diversity prevented the consolidation of power in the hands of a few elites. The individual interest of more production became aligned with the national interest of more production and the system fostered accountability.
Development experts sometimes dismiss the unique series of historical accidents of the sort that led to modern-day Botswana’s climate of accountability. But Botswana proves that dispersion of power leads to accountability and economic progress. Europeans have proved it. Americans have proved it. Africans have proved it. Rather than prescribing aid, which further concentrates power and stagnates economies, development experts should learn from what Africa has demonstrated.
Professor Iqbal Z. Quadir is founder of MIT’s Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship and founder of Grameenphone in Bangladesh.
Dispersing power
- Concentrations of power have roots in colonial legacy.
- Entrepreneurship and innovation are aligning individual interests.
- Botswana’s climate of accountability comes from a dispersion of power.
