Sunday, 29 June 2014
Thursday, 19 June 2014
African Enlightenment
In composing an African enlightenment, the main trajectories are the philosophical entrenchment of an African renaissance, democratic citizenship, culture, arts and music, education for critical thinking, women’s equality, and empowerment, paradigmatic shifts in critical thinking
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The Nile Conundrum: Harnessing our vast Water & Agricultural Potential
The Nile Conundrum:
Harnessing our vast water & agricultural potential
The Resource Base
Ethiopia has 12 River Basins with estimated surface water resources potential of 123 billion cubic meters (bm3) (Abbay, Baro-Akobo, Tekeze and Omo Ghibe contribute 80% -90%)
Ethiopia has 11 freshwater and 9 saline lakes, four crater lakes and over 12 major swamps and wetlands with a surface area of about 7,500km2. Ground Water Resources estimated to 26 bm3? Total potential of Irrigable land 5.3 million hectares, Hydropower Potential > 45, 000 MW. Ethiopia is the Water Tower of North East Africa
“The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.” Anwar Sadat, 1979.
“The next war in our region will be over water, not politics” Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
Fierce competition for fresh water may well become a source of conflict and wars in the future., but the water problems of our world need not be only a cause of tension; they can also be a catalyst for cooperation. … If we work together, a secure and sustainable water future can be ours –Kofi Annan, 2001-2002
“Just in the case of all other natural resources on its territories, Ethiopia has the right and obligations to exploit the water resources of the Empire…for the benefit of the present and future generations of its citizens…in anticipation of the growth in population and expanding needs. The Imperial Ethiopian Government…reasserts and reserves now and for the future, the right to take all such measures in respect of its water resources,…namely those waters providing so nearly the entirety of the volume of the Nile”
HM Emperor Haile Sellasse I
The Role of political and civic leadership leaders in State reconstruction
Changing local capacities, roles and ownership and the use of new technologies: Social media platforms, resourcing and financing and partnerships and coordination
Horn Economic and Social Policy Institute
(an independent think tank working on the Horn Africa)
Governance and Leadership for Senior Government
Officials of Somalia and South Sudan,
Dec 9, 2013, Addis Ababa
Why is State Building an Important arena of Political Theory & Public Policy?
There is growing concern among politicians, development agencies and academicians about weak, fragile, or failing states. This concern has been mainly driven by the recognition that fragile states serve as a base for terrorist groups, organized crime and other international security threats. Concern over the inability of fragile states to provide basic social services and security to their own citizens has also been widely recognized.
What is state failure?
The fundamental failure of the state to perform core functions necessary to meet the basic needs of its citizens characterizes failure. Such states are incapable of ensuring basic security for their citizens and are unable to maintain the rule of law and justice. Fragile states are also incapable of providing basic social services and economic opportunities to their citizens. The state also often lacks legitimacy and support from a significant amount of the population.
Security and development require resilient states that are able to fulfill their responsibilities to their citizens. Successful state building will contribute to human security, development and international stability. State building is a critically important though a highly challenging endeavor.
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An Introspective Look at the Failure of International Aid in Africa
Grand plans of poverty alleviation and development have failed, but the industry behind these plans has become a monster, which is hard to restructure let alone get rid of. It is hard because partly there s a lot of money and interest involved in countries which sponsor the industry as well as in aid recipient countries, and partly because of collective ignorance about the motives of global welfare-ism (BBC)...
An Introspective Look at the Failure of International Aid in Africa
Pan-African Medical Doctors & Healthcare Summit (PAMDHC)
Overview
Policy makers can be motivated by different factors to import or export policies, institutions and programs from or to another political setting. Thus, there would be more than one reason for policy elites to engage in policy transfer processes. It is natural tendency to look abroad, to see how similar problems were addressed, and to share ideas to draw lessons when past or present solutions are not found at home. Even at the level of application alone, it is largely overlooked that international models may enter societies through a proliferation of programs that hinder the growth of open and effective processes, which may retard indigenous experience and capacity.
The 1980s saw a major change in the lending-policy framework of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The World Bank began to reorient both its development policy models and its relation with the IMF and developing countries. This situation gave birth to the structural adjustment lending, in which conditionality was linked to policy reforms in Africa (Gibbon, 2000:122-123)
Critical problems concerning the philosophical and practical entrenchment of development systems in Africa receive scant attention. The fundamental issues of how the concepts, standards and practices of aid could be generated and sustained under historically hectic conditions, and the manner in which they are likely to gain systemic integrity and autonomy as well as broad social currency are inadequately addressed.
- Does aid enter local processes as an external ideology, constructing and deploying its concepts in sterile abstraction from the immediacies of indigenous traditions, beliefs, and values?
- In the case of rural communities, do development ideas addressing poverty come into play in total opposition to, or in cooperation with historic values and sentiments?
- In the struggle for aid effectiveness, do leading stakeholders equate the articulation of their ideas and agenda with the production of broad-based concepts, norms and goals that should govern the direction of national development at all levels?
The Washington Consensus, the Bible of overseas aid, has since acquired a pejorative sense. It has been the target of sharp criticism arguing that it is a way to open up less developed countries to investments from large multinational corporations. As of 2007, several Latin American countries are led by socialist or other left wing governments, some of which have adopted approaches contrary to the Consensus set of policies...
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The Tipping Point in Engaging Crises States and Societies in Disaster Risk Management
Participation is a common strand used by humanitarians to engage crisis societies. If used as a tool for empowerment & critical thinking, the approaches can lead to fruitful engagement, which is the main theme of this think piece: philosophical and analytical dimensions to the engagement of crisis-affected societies in humanitarian action.
Nonetheless, beyond platitudes and good intentions, engagement of crisis-affected societies’, premised in an ethic of empowerment and compassion, ‘often achieves oratorical rather than genuine outcomes; which raises the question as to what the basis for the claim of human insecurity is, which humanitarian actors sought to engage crisis-affected societies in the search for durable solutions. True, humanitarian action has saved millions of lives, but the sustainability of interventions raise fundamental questions as they are not augured on indigenous adaptive strategies, that nurtured a survival niche long before institutional aid came to the scene. By a way of contributing to mend these infirmities, we may theorize Disaster Risk management as the dynamic interaction of policy, strategy, organization and process.
Advancing Security & Availing Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons
Central African Republic and South Sudan are new entrants to the litany of human displacement & despair in Africa, so much, so the repeat of the Rwandan Genocide would be too ghastly to contemplate. This is happening despite the fact that protection & assistance to the IDPs is central to the African Union Kampala Convention. African states have legally committed themselves to promote & strengthen regional & national measures to prevent or mitigate, prohibit & eliminate root causes of internal displacement & provide durable solutions.
Furthermore, they have agreed to establish legal framework for preventing internal displacement, protecting & assisting IDPs, to establish legal framework for solidarity, cooperation, promotion of durable solutions & mutual support among States ... They have pledged to provide for the obligations & responsibilities of States & provide for the respective obligations and responsibilities of stakeholders on prevention, protection of, & assistance to, IDPs.
Nonetheless, the AU Conventions have a history of implementation deficit. They seem within reach, only to elude; they look readily tractable, only to resist realization. As we look intently into an emptiness of gruesome genocide in SS & CAR, the UNSC must focus on the most vital action of addressing the root causes of displacement, restoring security & elevating participatory humanitarian action. It must augur its decisions on soft power of conflict management approaches, alliance of ethnics and religions, peace, reconciliation, shared values, vision and resources of civil society, and Public Private Partnerships and implementation of ‘right to protect’ resolutions.
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Contents Effective States, Enlightened Societies & Legal Empowerment of the Poor
Enlightenment is man’s emergence from
self-incurred immaturity-- to throw off the spoon-fed dogma and formulas and
‘cultivate our minds’. The Age of
Enlightenment, which was not a set of ideas more than it was a set of
controversial values, arrives as an era in philosophy and intellectual,
scientific, and cultural life, centred upon the 18th century, in
which reason was advocated as the primary source for legitimacy and authority. On the other hand, the
prevailing intellectual movement of the Renaissance was humanism, a
philosophical underpinning that humans are rational beings and emphasising the
dignity and worth of the individual, an emphasis that was central to
Renaissance developments in many areas.
Aesthetics,
the other dominant theory of the Renaissance on human beauty, asserted that
reality consists of archetypes, or forms, beyond human sensation, which are the
models that exist in human experience. The book underpins the challenges to African enlightenment grounded
on slavery, colonialism, militarism and barbarism, pseudo democracies and fake
elections, the role of international development agencies and regional
political establishments, globalisation and the politics of enlightenment. It
also analyses the impact: state fragility, failure, and collapse. Within
current projects of political reform, enlightenment is either conventionalized
or sterilized on terrain of theory and often vacuously formalized on the ground
of practice. It enters African society in relatively abstract, syncretic, and
plain form, yet is expected to land itself to immediate and vital African
polity's socio-political experience. It suggests itself and seems within reach; only to
elude, and appears readily practicable only to resist realisation.
In composing an African enlightenment, the
main trajectories are the philosophical entrenchment of an African renaissance,
democratic citizenship, culture, arts and music, education for critical
thinking, women’s equality, and empowerment, paradigmatic shifts on the role of
rules and institutions towards an era of new public management for an African
enlightenment. The central hypothesis is that the relative strength of thinkers and organizations determines the
rules of the political game that are installed. Enlightenment requires a plural
set of rules, which ensure critical thinking, and promote, and protect rules of
peaceful participation and competition. The concern here is not so much the
diversity of ideas, values, and opinions allowed to gain currency during
enlightenment as modes of their competitive and co-operative articulation.
A vital trait, which
runs through much of in the history of governance and governmentality, is
between the authoritarian stewardship, on the one hand, and navigation errands of
the state, on the other. Recently the discussion has shifted tremendously to
the developmental state. Some
of the identified elements of an effective state and an engaged society are:
rule of law and anti-corruption civil society, executive accountability of
governing institutions, legislative accountability and judicial accountability;
and efficiency of budget processes administration and civil service. Development of public information and media enhance human security and cultural democracy, tourism and the rize of
the arts.
Political leadership
in Africa requires intimate knowledge of public policy analysis, formulation,
and management and development of strategic plans and implementing them a commitment to achieving the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs). There is a need for an independent review of the
capacities of institutions as regards the MDGs and the rights-based approach it
promotes to developing the institutions and developing knowledge management
systems, stopping the brain drain from the nation and from the civil service
and turning it to brain-gain.
On the human security
front, states need to develop integrated packages of policy, technology and
investment strategies together with appropriate decision-making tools including
a land use policy and a strategic land use plan; revolutionising food security
and the agricultural sector to promote large-scale mercantile food production;
promoting small and intermediate-scale entrepreneurship as a vehicle of future
growth and higher levels of value-added and economic diversification, by
surmounting current deficit of skills that are necessary to establish a range
of managerial capabilities; evolving viable credit and capital markets; and
improving the quality education and health: learning throughout life and
education for critical consciousness.
A disciplined,
healthy, nourished, and motivated labour force is required to produce and
distribute such goods and services needed for sustained human development.
Leadership teams that are committed and willing with positive attitude to
facilitate the process of opening up greater opportunities for every citizen
are needed. To meet this challenge by developing think tanks is synonymous to
meeting the development challenge at large.
The executive arm of
government should resist the temptation to manipulate the other two arms either
in a subtle or flagrant manner. In spite of their enormous powers, head of
governments’ stature and achievements depend largely on his personal vision and
sense of mission as well as the experience and managerial responsibility he
brings into the office.
In addition, leaders
must appreciate the importance of his personal commitment to the highest ideals
of good governance and the vision of a united and prosperous nation; show
personal example of fairness, industry, discipline, decorum, dignity, probity
and respect for procedures in the conduct of government business. They need to engage
in the appointment of people who meet the strictest standards of integrity, competence,
and loyalty - people who share the vision of the leader and are more interested
in making history. They must have the ability to motivate teams to project the
image of a government that is austere, cohesive, disciplined, and
achievement-oriented consistently. They must have the ability to prevent
cleavages in the body politic and to ensure harmonious and speedy conduct of
government business.
In order to restore
true federalism it is important to foster the restoration of the powers and
responsibilities of local governments in accordance with the provisions of their
Constitutions; the dismantling of all institutions that are inimical to true
federalism; a review of the statutory allocation formula to make more funds
available to the local governments and thereby empower them to perform their
constitutional functions and revisit the issues of devolution of powers in
order to further decentralize government activities, and make them responsive
to local needs.
More important, the
book addresses the necessity for governance and leadership capacity building – reinventing the
quality of training and education in human development, undertaking a serious
and concerted effort to build a core civil service and processes that
indubitably must be initiated to develop that sector -- focusing on political,
social, and economic governance responsibilities of the state’s oversight responsibilities. On the other
hand, the
state needs to develop corporate strategic and business plans for the 21st
century where the state must establish capacity for policy and strategic harmonization
recognition and acknowledgement of the importance of credit and capital
markets; creation and nurturing of enabling environments for entrepreneurship
to attract investors and tourists.
Indeed, African Governments recognize that weak institutional capacity
is a major setback to development, and unless it is corrected in a timely
manner it will hamper the decentralisation and democratization process that the
country is striving to implement. The strengthening state capacity will have
major knock-on effects for all other areas of development and poverty reduction
agenda. Capacity building is integral to overall poverty reduction strategy.
Hence, the main objectives of the priming an effective state and engaged
society are to develop the main elements of the discourse on an effective state
and the relevance of capacity building in contributing to one, to set the
agenda on the political rules and institutions for what the effective state can
best achieve.
State Reconstruction
State Reconstruction
There are around
one billion people believed to live in 50 fragile or failed states, many of
which are in Africa. There is growing international concern
over the growing number of fragile states in the world. This concern has
been mainly been driven by the recognition that fragile and failed states can
be a source of domestic and international insecurity. Fragile and failed states
serve as a base for terrorist groups, organized crime and other international
security threats. Fragile and failed states are also characterized by violent
disorder, conflict, lawlessness, and collapse of basic services. Effective and
legitimate states, able to fulfill their responsibilities of providing basic
social services and security to their citizens are widely accepted to be vital
to the achievement of peace, stability and development. Thus, state reconstruction in fragile states is a critically important though a highly challenging endeavor.
The concept of state reconstruction was first used by Charles Tilly in ‘Western-State
Making and Theories of Political Transformation’ in connection to the creation of states in Western Europe and focused
on the power enforcement of state in society. Since, state reconstruction has become an inter-disciplinary topic, drawing from
different fields of study. By the 1970s, the world was divided into
sovereign states, which emerged as the organizing international political. However,
during the 1980 the focus turned to
reducing the role of state and unleashing the capitalist market. Thus, the
concept of state building was off the international agenda. State reconstruction re-emerged, in the
late 1980s and 1990s as armed conflicts following the Cold War were
increasingly associated with failed and collapsed states. Thus, international
peace-building interventions increasingly focused on rebuilding and
reconfiguring the state as a central feature in peace and development
interventions in post-conflict situations. In the post 9/11 era, the importance
of state building was further consolidated by the growing international concern
about “weak”, “fragile”, or “failing” states. Security and development were
linked and the security of wealthy states is viewed as being threatened by the
“weak”, “fragile”, or “failing” poor states.
Though the concept of
state reconstruction is used by a wide variety of experts, the concept has
become an area of contestation among international experts and development
practitioners. State building as understood by political and international
relations experts refers to the set of actions undertaken by national and/or
international actors to establish, reform and strengthen state institutions
where these had seriously been eroded or were missing. Development experts however criticize the state
building concept as ‘neo-imperialist’ or ‘neo-colonialist’ used as an instrument to
transfer and instill western culture, values and institutions. This debate has raised the
issue of local ownership of state building initiatives. Another controversy that surrounds state building is
as to how justified foreign intervention is in undertaking state building
activities in the domestic affairs of weak or fragile states.
The concept of the ‘state’ is also a source of controversy.
Depending on differing theories about the state, the literature on state
building is also largely divided. Some theorists
argue that the state is the
foundation of the international system, which should be, preserved. On the
other hand, others argue that the state especially one formed by a former
colonial power is not worth preserving. Such states should be left to disintegrate
so that a system that represents the preexisting realities and culture of the
society can be formed that existed before colonization.
Currently, there is no coherent strategic approach to state reconstruction. Nonetheless, there is emphasis on enhancing the capacity of
the state apparatus to ensure sustainable peace, which cannot be separated from state competences in the provision
of basic social services and security. The literature mentions different
challenges to successful state building. Conflict, lack of basic security,
social diversity and lack of resources are the key obstacles to state building
initiatives. The lack of a functional
tax system is a major obstacle for state building. The challenge to
successful state building is a highly fragmented and ethnically divided
society. Incompetent public
administration, corruption, bureaucratic decay, and bad policies are the core
challenges to successful state building. This is taken to be a purposeful
technique used by leaders to create ‘shadow states’ to meet their personal aim.
A ‘shadow state is an informal, commercially oriented network that operates
alongside weak government bureaucracies that does not compromise the power of
rulers’. State building is
especially challenging in conflict affected or post conflict situations or in
countries where criminality and violence are prevalent.
Different experts have tried to categorize states in different
typologies according to the different challenges they face. The most
comprehensive typology is provided by the OECD which defined states
plagued with the above-mentioned challenges as fragile states. State fragility
is stated in the literature as the major challenge to building resilient
states. Thus, state building is constrained or undermined by the very
conditions of fragility that makes it necessary. Shewit
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