Crises of Ethical Governance & Curbing Plunders in African States: Theory and Praxis

Talks of mal-governance and corruption have been a clarion call for governments in Africa. This paper looks at the theory and practice in public administration ethics to take systemic measures to combat unethical governance. In spite of fast growing economies and notwithstanding the slavery and colonial legacy, that is still taxing the continent, new faces and forces of vulnerability and poverty haunt the Africa region. These series of lectures consider the relations between corruption, security and development. 

The public service suffers from the pressures of economies, no less than those of politics. The realities prevailing in Africa render expectations of Africa’s public service rather unreasonable. For most junior public servants in Africa daily survival is nothing less than a minor miracle because their wages lag behind the requirements of self-reproduction. Also, at a structural-political level, structural-cultural level and epistemological level, is the conflict of the legitimacy of the state. Its ‘public’ is nominal with the informal kinship-based; legitimacy of salient values of indigenous African cultures and those of the value systems of the modern state and the antimonies, distortions and confusions of an epistemological stance, which insistently privileges perceives Africa in the image of the West.

  Chronologically one discerns two overarching themes - the organizational context in which individual administrators must work out ethical decisions and conduct, and democratic values as normative touchstones for public administrative ethics. Chronologically, the first to emerge clearly is that of the organization as an arena fraught with complicating factors for any would-be rational ethical administrator. Democratic norms are found in the earliest of these works, but are developed neither as lucidly, nor as progressively as the organizational setting. Thus, democratic theory and values are deemed here to constitute a minor theme, not in the sense of being less important ultimately, but in terms of the attention paid to it in these works in particular, as well as in the literature in general. Increasingly serious and systematic attention devoted to the influence of organizational factors, both positive and negative, is quite clear. At the outset, democratic values are assumed the most basic values necessary for the study of public administration ethics...  

Key words: ethics, corruption, public administration, good governance
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Development Diplomacy, The Washington Consensus, the SDGs & Democratic Rules, Institutions

  

      The draft Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proclaim 17 goals to end poverty in all its forms everywhere and ensure healthy lives, quality education, gender equality, access to justice, modern energy for all, sustainable economic growth, resilient infrastructure and industrialisation, make human settlements inclusive, combat climate change and strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development. The complex webs of SDGs demand that Africa fosters development diplomacy systems and leadership at all level of the implementation of the SDGs. Development diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting aid negotiations on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Overseas Aid between representatives of states and donors. It is a form of public diplomacy that deals with the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy; the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with another; the reporting of foreign affairs and its impact on policy; communication between those whose job is communication, as diplomats and foreign correspondents; and the process of intercultural communications.

     On the other hand, The Washington Consensus has spun opportunities and threats to social stability and political sustainability. The intent of this guest lecture is to develop ideas for discourse, dialogue, and build consensus on vital issues of diplomacy, democracy and development. Democratic development derives from the attainment of widespread literacy and education, or a shared sense among citizens of national unity. These explanatory factors operate at different levels of analysis: a socio-economic structural approach, a contingent approach and advancement in the promotion of rules and institutions. With reference to governance, the relevant rules concern administrative accountability, transparency and predictability. Rules may or may not be formalised. The Washington Consensus, which was meant to reinforce the above, included ten broad sets of recommendations. These revolve around fiscal policy discipline, redirection of public spending from subsidies to pro-poor services, tax, interest and interest rate reform, liberalisation of trade and FDI, privatisation, deregulation, prudent oversight of financial institutions and legal security for property rights. The Consensus has been the target of sharp criticism that it is a way to open up less developed countries to investments from large multinational corporations and their wealthy owners in advanced First World economies.

Key words: Development diplomacy, Public diplomacy, SDGs, The Washington Consensus

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Jobs for Africa’s Youth Engaging Africa’s Youth Employment Generating Social Safety-nets and Community Harmony

    

      The famines of the past few decades are indeed a cruel test to Africans. While the outpouring sympathy and generous response of the international community to human distress have been phe­nomenal, the actions of “the firemen of international disasters” had brought to light some serious doubts about the ability of these interventions to reduce peoples' vulnerability triggered by incompetent leadership recurrently. Indeed, states in Africa have greatly expanded in the last few decades. But this growth has not usually been accompanied by a concomitant im­provement in the capacity to provide the vision and the ability of the state to extend authority throughout the territory to deliver public services. Hence, we assert that, the widespread incidence of unemployment is directly attributable to basic weaknesses of social and political leadership, rules of the game and political institutions. With few exceptions, nations have failed to win popular legitimacy - possessing relatively few authentic organizations that can articulate and aggregate social interests and civic education remains non-existent or at best, weak or underdeveloped.

      The main objectives of safety nets are to serve as under-employment cushions; while assisting the development of public works schemes. They avail communities the opportunity of working in their own develop­ment as the resources required for managing survival (elements of indigenous famine survival- strat­egies of the  last  resort - include austerity and reduced consump­tion, temporary mi­gration, divestment, and crisis migration) are rendered unnecessary by the resources generated by these safety nets. Indeed, there is no more compelling raison d'être nor a mission-objective so utterly entrenched in the preservation and, even advancement of human-kind, than good governance and leadership that can lead a social league to relate cogently to an epidemic of ignorance that has spun out of control (Costantinos, 1999).

Key words: safety nets, employment, entrepreneurship, jobs for Africa, finance,

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The Paris Carnage, Radicalism & a Global Civil War Can the We Learn from the Ascent of ‘Asymmetrical Inner-city Armies’ & Unorthodox Martial Manoeuvres?

Trotsky famously said even if you are not interested in war, war is interested in you. Close to a million have died, injured and displaced by a mission to destroy Saddam Hussein and his “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. Syria has been disjointed by disingenuous intervention leading to human calamity and emergence of ISIS that propelled the horrific attack in Paris.  The carnage by jihadists has killed 32,658 people in 67 countries last year. The rise of asymmetrical armies and unorthodox military tactics who gained momentum in destabilized Syria and Iraq use the name ISIS (a catchy name of the Egyptian goddess, Isis, Aset). Jihad conjures up with “struggle” and with two diametrically opposite meanings. One is struggle or resistance from within in an effort to cleanse oneself corresponding to prayer, meditation, intro­spection and altruistic conduct as preached and practiced by major orga­nized religions. The second version is struggle with the use and extensive employment of the sword and hence vio­lence against the infidels.

The ISIS terror that has swept through Europe has had a universal impact but the footprints of irre­sponsibility are now part of global response to terrorism at a planetary scale, im­possible to be dismissed as an undesired but necessary outcome. Looking at the Syrian crisis and the resultant refugee influx into Europe, the aid industry, a colossal business, which is hard to reform, follows the footsteps of the ‘military-industrial complex’ that created chaos in Iraq & Syria. Containment of the ISIS will not work but to root it out, the fundamental reason why all this terrorist movement has gained momentum, the Israeli-Palestinian quagmire, must be resolved to mutual gains that can happen if all stakeholders join for peace ardently. Good and bad ‘terrorists’ and states sponsoring them must be jettisoned simultaneously that can be successful if a politi­cal solution in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Egypt can be arrived in an inclusive manner, if the Sunnis and Shias can come to a truce and if these are ad­dressed without strategic considerations.

Key words: terrorism, ISIS, Syria, Iran, refugees
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Picture: The Spectator 

Developing the Regional States of Ethiopia: Afar, Benishangul Gumuz, Gambella & Somali Regional States

       In 1984, a famine began to strike Ethiopia with apocalyptic force. Westerners watched in horror as the images of death filled their TV screens: the rows of fly-haunted corpses, the skeletal orphans crouched in pain, the villagers desperately scrambling for bags of grain dropped from the sky. What started out as a trickle of aid turned into a billion-dollar flood. For more than four decades, nearly half of Ethiopians have experienced some degree of food insecurity and malnutrition. Approximately five million are chronically food insecure, i.e., unable at some time in any year to secure an adequate supply of food for survival. Ethiopia, a nation known as the water tower of North-East Africa is the epicentre of famines. Surface water resources in Ethiopia flow in 12 major river basins. It is estimated that an average of 122.19 billion cubic metres of water is annually discharged from the Abay (Nile), Tekeze, Shebelle, Baro and Omo-Gibe river basins with an estimated 3.5 million ha of irrigable land. Hence, the long-term objective is to establish a nation that can ensure its citizenry human security and development

        The DRSs are endowed with fertile soil, abundant water resources, natural forests, and a wide variety of mineral resources. Nevertheless, constraints against the effective utilisation of resources to improve the livelihoods of people are numerous. The proposed UNJP actions to show case the rapid use of the resource endowments the DRSs have and turn them into opportunities that would ensure livelihood security in 18 months. These focus on capacity of the Federal Agencies and the DRSs to guide regional development and economic governance and technical capacity in partnership with the private sector. Wereda capacity for environmentally sustainable livelihoods and improved delivery of (quantity and quality) social services entails enhancement of quality education and expansion of quality of health services and integrated Sustainable Livelihood Services.

This include food security, natural resources conservation and development, climate change adaptation, irrigation infrastructure development, animal resources development, agricultural research and extension; and cooperative development, development of public private partnership, entrepreneurship and employment creation. In the pastoralist areas, existing best practices will be replicated and improved upon. 

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Ethiopia Financial & Telecom Liberalization: Potential Prospects & Hazards

Abstract
While Ethiopia has recorded significant achievements in GDP growth, it faces predictable armor of trials with too few mechanism and wherewithal, while also wrestling with the perennial problem of sequencing policy reforms, all subject to doctrinal reins. Given the very slim boundaries for maneuver imposed by abject poverty, deficits and a complex interlace in its political fabric, getting the priorities right are the central issues to be addressed. Using comparative analyses with other African nations that have liberalized their economy, the research delves into the impact of liberalization and the requisite preparatory basis of a reform pedestal on which the nation can be a winner in this game. The financial sector is underdeveloped in comparison to some neighbors where part of the population operates in a cashless society.
Financial and telecom liberalization is an integral part of the overall economic liberalization, a set of policy measures designed to deregulate and transform the system with the view to achieving a liberalized market-oriented system within an appropriate regulatory framework. Findings of the research undergird eloquent testimony of complexity and uncertainty theories and functioning economic models that Ethiopia can emulate, underpinning the fact that this can be complex, when reforms are subject to ideological therapy. Hence, managed restructuring of the public sector, establishing institutional capacity for policy analysis, formulation and coordination, regulatory capacity, advancing fiscal sustainability are gleaned as a panacea for change and transformation.
Creating a merit based and metric civil service is a basic requirement to achieve higher ‘allocative’ and ‘productive’ efficiency, augmenting private sector share and improving public sector financial health. African countries have now deregulated their ICT industry and wooing investors to the economy, with significant impacts to show, driving rapid growth with the exception of state monopolies - Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti.
Key words: liberalization, right sizing, meritocracy, telecom, private sector, regulation
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