Human Security and Development in Africa

Human security and development in Africa
NANA K. POKU, NEIL RENWICK AND JOAO GOMES PORTO
The concept and practices of security have experienced a global redefinition

over the past quarter-century and particularly since the end of the Cold War.
The key shift has been away from the definition of threats as driven by strategic
interests and the global power-play of the superpowers. Rather, security today is
more widely accepted to embrace insecurities driven by non-military challenges.
Central to this view is the challenge of meeting the basic needs and aspirations of
millions of people in Africa, Asia and beyond. Contemporary security, therefore,
is tied to the complex and multiple challenges of development. Yet, despite this
shift in perspective and the demonstrable need for a reformulation of security in
Africa, this region has remained stubbornly bound to the traditional imperatives
of state interests, power, military force and geopolitical instability. Consequently,
the active pursuit of security conceived in developmental and human terms has
been frustrated for well over four decades.
African leaders are increasingly aware that a cooperative approach—one that
transcends the rhetoric of grandiose speeches and continental summits—is needed
if they are to grapple successfully with the multiple problems that affect their
respective countries’, and by extension the continent’s, security and development.
More important perhaps is the realization, taking root in many African capitals,
of the interdependence of their polities, societies and economies—and therefore
challenges, opportunities and threats—requiring concerted, coordinated and
collaborative action among themselves as well as towards the outside world. The
adoption of the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD),
the affirmation by the African Union (AU) of its commitment to improve Africa’s
economic and political governance, and the strengthening of regional integra-
tion at the level of regional economic communities (RECs) are clear indications
of a gradual but sure change. Already 25 countries have voluntarily acceded to
the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) and the process has begun with a
number of reviews. Moreover, across the continent—in Ghana, Senegal, Kenya,
Tanzania, Malawi and Madagascar, to name but a few instances—we are seeing the
transformation of political regimes without recourse to gratuitous violence and in
most cases with a transfer of power to opposition parties, a phenomenon rarely, if
ever, previously witnessed in Africa’s post-colonial history.
International Affairs 83: 6 (2007) 1155–1170

© 2007 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs
Nana K. Poku, Neil Renwick and Joao Gomes Porto
Yet the task of building stable, prosperous societies remains immense. Nothing
highlights this more graphically than the challenge of meeting the targets set by
the international community for achieving the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs). These include halving poverty and hunger, arresting diseases and environ-
mental degradation, helping newborn babies survive infancy and educating them
in childhood. In what follows, we will argue that the key to attaining stability
and prosperity in the continent lies in overcoming key obstacles hampering
Africa’s progress towards meeting the MDG targets. This article identifies four
key challenges standing in the way of achieving these targets: ensuring peace
and security; fostering good governance; tackling the HIV/AIDS pandemic and
other diseases; and achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women.
In other words, only by formulating and executing policies that explicitly address
the mutuality of developmental security challenges will the human potential of
Africa be released.
Rethinking security in Africa

Kwame Nkrumah’s assurance in 1954 that ‘if we get self government, we’ll transform
the Gold Coast into a paradise in ten years’ was one of his more extreme statements,
but one not markedly out of step with the prevailing anticipation of the fruits of
African freedom. For Nkrumah’s generation, independence was an opportunity to
prove, in the words of Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s head of government in 1961, that
‘the African was capable of running his own affairs; fighting his own battles and
developing his own people’. The key was the control of the state; again, Nkrumah
offers insight: ‘Seek ye first political kingdom and all else will follow.’ A mere 60
years later, it is painfully clear that ‘all else’ has not followed; the post-colonial vision
of prosperity under self-rule seems no more than a distant dream.
The biggest obstacle has been the challenge of creating viable states in order to
generate development. Although each country presents its own specific idiosyn-
crasies, post-independence state- and nation-building generally proceeded in a
centralized fashion subject to the requirements of a concept of sovereign state-
hood by then already inadequate to the realities of most of the developing world,
but particularly of post-colonial Africa. Political modernization—whether from
the left or right—called for the strengthening of the state (often consisting of little
more than the colonial administrative structures left at the time of decolonization),
its bureaucracy and its security apparatus as the only viable way open to newly
independent states to claim statehood. At the heart of this approach, the establish-
ment of control over territory and population by the centre—and those who, for
one reason or another, came to dominate it—became the order of the day. In some
states, the dominant traditional nation regarded independence from colonial rule
as the opportunity to become the core of the new nation, as other ethnic groups
were assimilated into it or marginalized. Wolof in Senegal, American-Liberian in
Liberia, Hutu in Rwanda, Shona in Zimbabwe, Baganda in Uganda and Amhara
in Ethiopia saw themselves as the key elements in defining the new nations as the
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International Affairs 83: 6, 2007
cultural basis of the new state. In other states, an artificial creation was decreed
and all traditional nations were dissolved in it; those who could or would not fit
were excluded. The Ivoirité of President Henri Konan Bedié defined a new nation
of essentially southern ethnic groups ‘native’ to the land within Côte d’Ivoire’s
boundaries and the rest were decreed non-nationals and non-citizens.1 In other
cases, the creation of political ‘fronts’ leading to single-party regimes—FRELIMO
in Mozambique, or the MPLA of Angola—was an attempt to subsume ethnic–
linguistic, regional and ideological differences under a single leadership coloured
by the banner of Afro-Marxism.
The resulting compromises have made it difficult for states in Africa to claim
the legitimate monopoly of force in the Weberian sense, as both the osten-
sible monopoly and the legitimacy are contested—a process well captured by
Mohammed Ayoob’s ‘third world security predicament’. Hence there are large
areas where legitimacy is challenged by rebellion and internal lawlessness in
Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan,
Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe
and perhaps others. In all these states, though government may be accepted, the
political institutions through which its powers are exercised are often treated with
remarkable indifference by large sections of the citizenry. And if this is the case
where state structures and institutions are present, the fact is that in large tracts
of Africa the state is entirely absent—in physical presence as well as in the provi-
sion of basic services to the population, including of course security and develop-
ment. While passive acceptance might not be problematic in other contexts (one
often hears about the disfranchised or disenchanted electorate in western Europe
and North America), in the African context it serves to deepen insecurities by
alienating people from the apparatus of the state. At worst, in areas where the
state is entirely absent not only is there no palpable, visible relation between the
individual and the state, but the local population is left entirely at the mercy of
unscrupulous political and economic entrepreneurs.
Both an obstacle to the development of a sense of citizenship and a result of the
weak capacity of states, this segmentation of society has impeded the many attempted
reforms of political and socio-economic structures while exacerbating tensions in
many countries in Africa. The obvious manifestation of this is the long litany of
conflicts strung across the continent. Between 1968 and 2006, more than 42 wars
were fought in Africa, the vast majority of them intrastate in origin. The continuing
conflicts over the remains of Sudan provide a poignant reminder of the plight of
ordinary folk who are without protection from any state—some falling prey to
the remnants of the very state that was supposed to be their protector. Similarly,
the fragility of several war-to-peace transitions—in Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire,
Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—and the distinct possibility
that a number of countries on the continent—Chad, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Guinea
and Zimbabwe, to mention but a few—may degenerate into conflict demonstrates
1
See Zartman I. William, ‘The African states’, in Nana K. Poku and Jeggan Senghor, Towards Africa’s renewal
(London: Ashgate Press, 2007).
1157
in the most dramatic way the exposure of vast numbers of people not only to the
dangers of violence from marauding hordes of warriors and bandits, in a manner
reminiscent of medieval times, but to hunger and disease on a cataclysmic scale.
Against this background, the slow but progressive development by African
states of a cooperative approach to tackling the problems of security and develop-
ment in the continent is a welcome, albeit gradual, trend. And in this, the creation
and strengthening of the AU and related structures and institutions—in particular
the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA)—may offer some hope. To
be sure, the deployment of a fully fledged APSA, comprising (as will be discussed
below) a conflict prevention, management and resolution capability at the AU and
within the RECs, will take some years to materialize fully. Yet, the fact that this
new approach to tackling conflicts and insecurity stems from, in fact originates in,
a notion of security that fully embraces the responsibility to protect constitutes
in and of itself a radical, noteworthy shift. It is well documented that issues of
territorial integrity and the protection of sovereignty transfixed the AU’s prede-
cessor, the Organization of African Unity (OAU). For almost 30 years the OAU
sought to legitimize state policies with respect to citizens by placing the domestic
domain beyond the bounds of concern; what happens to the state matters, what
happens to the people within is of secondary importance. The process of estab-
lishing the AU set it along a significantly different path with respect to security
where, constitutionally at least, the responsibility to protect may supplant state
sovereignty. The OAU separated social and economic challenges from the tradi-
tional security challenges of intra- and interstate conflict. However, the AU’s
constitutional, institutional and policy formation explicitly reflects the influence
of the more holistic human security perspective, and the AU Commission actively
disseminates this approach to Africa’s political elites, as well as—equally impor-
tantly—to the subregional level of the RECs that constitute fundamental pillars
of the APSA.2
The AU has taken a different approach by acknowledging that, in Africa, state
security is often threatened not by conventional threats of armed attack from other
countries, but by more insidious dangers, many of which arise from the weakness
of the African state itself. In recognizing this reality, the 2004 Non-Aggression
and Common Defence Pact of the AU offers the following definition of security
in the African context:
[In Africa] security means the protection of individuals with respect to the satisfaction of
the basic needs of life; it also encompasses the creation of the social, political, economic,
military, environmental and cultural conditions necessary for survival, including the
protection of fundamental freedoms, access to education, healthcare, and ensuring that
each individual has opportunities and choices to fulfil his/her own potential.3
2
Thomas Kwasi Tieku, ‘African Union promotion of human security in Africa’, African Security Review 16: 2,
2007, pp. 26–37.
3
Draft text as adopted by the first meeting of the African ministers of defence and security on the establish-
ment of the African Standby Force and the Common African Defence and Security Policy, 20–22 Jan. 2004,
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The text was adopted during the African Union summit of the same year.
1158
The AU peace and security framework seeks therefore to relocate the security
discourse in Africa from the post-colonial obsession with sovereignty and
non-interference to the socio-economic realities of the continent. Clearly, the
APSA is a relatively new initiative; yet it is one that has already borne some fruit,
as evidenced by the relatively successful AU mission in Burundi (AMIB), the devel-
opment of the planning elements of several of the regional brigades that will form
the African Standby Force, or the creation in close cooperation with the RECs of
an early warning and prevention system, the Continental Early Warning System
(CEWS). Nevertheless, one should not forget that this is work in progress: the
initial consensus underpinning the acceptance of an approach to security challenges
informed by concerns for human security and development remains somewhat
tentative and so far substantially untested by issues of core national interest. Some
observers have suggested that ‘the jury is out . . . on whether the AU would be able
to institutionalise human security in Africa effectively’.4
Although the framework is not the first statement of a collective response by
African leaders to the region’s development challenges (that distinction belongs to
the 1980 Lagos Plan of Action), its chances of successful implementation appear
better than its predecessors, for at least two reasons. First, while some official
development assistance (ODA) continues to be given in furtherance of geopolitical
considerations (recent Chinese investment in Africa being a good case), there is a
marked shift to allocations based on good policies driven by the practical develop-
ment needs of Africans. This evolving new thrust of aid reflects a much greater
understanding and recognition of the conditions required for aid to be effective,
and of what works and doesn’t work in domestic policy reform. Second, the
changes are largely endorsed by civil society. Recent Afrobarometer surveys and
the World Values Survey show that large majorities of Africans believe democracy
is good for the economy and prefer democratic political systems to authoritarian
alternatives.5 The African public expects democracy to deliver access to the basic
necessities of life like food, water, shelter and education.
About 75 per cent of the respondents agreed that African governments were
changing for the better, and there are strong signs that the transformations are
taking roots. Political participation, for example, has improved more in Africa
during the past decades than in other regions. In 1982, only 10 per cent of
sub-Saharan African countries and 20 per cent of developing countries in four
other regions had chief executives selected via competitive multiparty elections.
As late as 1991, Africa showed virtually no improvement, while the proportion
in other developing countries had doubled to 40 per cent. By 1995, however, the
gap was nearly closed, despite continuing increases in other regions; and in 2006,
Africa was ahead of the other regions by about 8 percentage points.
The double-digit inflation characteristic of unstable macroeconomic conditions
in the early 1990s has been reduced to single-digit levels (with the exception of
Zimbabwe). This improvement has resulted from a combination of significantly
4
Tieku, ‘African Union promotion of human security in Africa’, p. 27.
5
World Value Survey (2000–6) wave, 6 countries; Afrobarometer survey, 2001–3, 12 countries.
1159
stronger fiscal controls across a wide range of countries, with a shift by central
banks towards a focus on price stability as the primary goal. As a result, gains on
the macroeconomic level are evident. According to the World Bank, since the
mid-1990s 15 African countries have had annual GDP growth in excess of 5 per
cent. For several of these countries—including Uganda, Mozambique, Tanzania,
Ghana and Senegal—higher growth has been accompanied by diversification of
their economies and exports. Significantly, some of the fastest-growing countries
have also performed relatively well in terms of poverty reduction. During the last
ten years a group of eight low-income African countries, which grew at an average
per capita rate of 2.9 per cent per year, succeeded in reducing poverty at an annual
rate of 1.5 percentage points, well on course to meet the MDG target of halving
income poverty by 2015.
Development and human security

The task ahead for Africa remains immense. The African Development Report 2006
offers some insights into the extent of the task.6 The report’s celebrated headline
of 3.5 per cent GDP growth in 2005 compared to 3.2 per cent in 2004 belies the
systematic decline observable in real per capita GDP growth from 1.0 per cent to 0.8
per cent in the same period. In developmental terms, this means that the combined
economies of Africa actually shrank by 0.2 per cent in the twelve months up to
the end of 2005. To put this in context, all other regions in the world are already
outperforming Africa, and efforts to redress this poor performance over the past
two decades have not been successful. In 2005, for example, the average gross
national product (GNP) per capita in the OECD countries was $28,086, compared
with $528 in Africa.7 This means that the industrialized countries are roughly 51
times as wealthy as African states. Assuming that the OECD countries could stop
stretching this development gap further, and hoping that African economies could
grow at an annual rate of 3.5 per cent over the coming years, it would still take the
continent some 135 years to reach the level of wealth enjoyed by OECD countries
today.
An outcome of Africa’s weak economic base has been the rise in poverty. While
the region accounts for 10 per cent of the world population, it is now home to 30
per cent of the world’s poor. Africa is the only region to have regressed in terms
of poverty in the last 40 years; extreme poverty here is twice the average global
rate and the actual number living in that condition has grown from 150 million to
300 million, more than 40 per cent of the region’s population. During the 1990s
the region experienced an annual decline in GDP per capita of 0.6 per cent, and
because economic growth was highly skewed between countries, approximately
half the total population are actually poorer in 2006 than they were in 1990. It is
also the case that income and wealth distributions are extremely unequal in many
countries, and with improved growth rates such inequalities are likely to increase
6
African Development Bank, African Development Report 2006 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
7
OECD 2006.
1160
rather than to diminish.8 Relative to all other developing regions, Africa has also
lagged in human development—especially for women and young people. The
lowest scores on the UN Human Development Index, which combines the educa-
tion, health and economic welfare of the population, are to be found in Africa.
The world formally adopted the MDGs as a programme of action in 2000, with
a target date for achievement of 2015. The baseline for measuring progress was
chosen as 1990. More than seven years have already passed, leaving countries with
less than eight years to reach the MDG targets (table 1). On the basis of current
trends, countries in sub-Saharan Africa are not on course to meet any of those
targets (see figure 1). Take, for example, the key issue of poverty reduction: for
sub-Saharan African countries to achieve the MDG target of reducing by 50 per
cent the proportion of Africans whose incomes are less than $1 a day by 2015 will
require growth in GDP close to 7 per cent in every country on the continent.
Key indicators suggest that this is currently not happening, and the prevailing
evidence gives only marginal room for optimism. Economic growth rates in Africa
have indeed increased since the mid-1990s, reaching an average for the continent
of 4.6 per cent in 2004. This reflected somewhat better terms of trade (especially
for mineral exporters), a turn-round in aid levels (which fell until 2000, and then
started rising), reduction in debt, and the impact of earlier macroeconomic and
structural reforms. But among low-income countries, only Uganda and Mozam-
bique have recorded consistent declines in poverty levels—these were also, signifi-
cantly, the only countries that achieved growth close to 7 per cent for several years,
although in Uganda growth has dipped and poverty has risen again slightly since
8
World Bank 2006.
Figure 1: The gap between the Millennium Development Goals and projected
levels in Africa, given current trends
70 61
MDG
60
50 Projection
MDG gap, %
38 36
40 33
30 33
16
20 26
22
10
0 6
0
Poverty % of children % of people % of people child mortality
headcount without without access without access
primary to pipe water to improved
education sanitation
Source: World Bank/IMF, Global Monitoring Report 2005 (Washington DC: World Bank/IMF
2005).
1161
Table 1: The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and targets
Goals Targets
Goal 1 Target 1: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of
Eradicate extreme people whose income is less than $1 a day
poverty and Target 2: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of
hunger people who suffer from hunger
Goal 2 Target 3: Ensure that by 2015 children everywhere, boys and
Achieve universal girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary
primary education schooling
Goal 3 Target 4: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and
Promote gender secondary education, preferably by 2005 and in all levels of
equality and education not later than 2015
empower women
Goal 4 Target 5: Reduce by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015 the
Reduce child under-five mortality rate
mortality
Goal 5 Target 6: Reduce by three-quarters between 1990 and 2015
Improve maternal the maternal mortality ratio
health
Goal 6 Target 7: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the
Combat HIV/ spread of HIV/AIDS
AIDS, malaria and
other diseases
Goal 7 Target 8: Integrate the principles of sustainable development
Ensure into country policies and reverse the loss of environmental
environmental resources.
sustainability Target 9: Halve proportion of people without sustainable
access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
Goal 8 Target 10: Develop further an open, rule based, predictable
Develop a global and non-discriminatory trading and financial system.
partnership for Target: 11: Address the special needs of the least developed
development countries.
Target 12: Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of
developing countries.
Source: Adapted from UN Millennium Project, 2005.
2003—and most countries have not yet moved to the consistently higher growth
needed to achieve the MDGs.
The remaining countries on the continent have made very little progress in
eradicating hunger and malnutrition. Indeed, the number of people suffering
malnutrition has increased to well over 200 million in recent decades and the
1162
Figure 2: Changes in life expectancy in four countries, 1980–1985 to 2005–

2010
Source: UN DESA/Population Division 2007; projection made by mid-term review team.
problem is especially severe in central, east and southern Africa, where almost half
of the population of 360 million is estimated as being undernourished. Women and
children are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity and malnutrition, with the
latter being especially important as a cause of mortality among the under-fives.
Trends were actually reversed during the 1990s in those countries most affected by
adverse growth in GDP and by the effects of HIV/AIDS. The UN Development
Programme and UNICEF recently concluded that ‘during the 1990s, the spread
of HIV/AIDS had a devastating effect on families and communities. The loss of
productive capacity among families affected by HIV/AIDS had a major impact on
food production and on nutritional well-being.’9
Across the continent the HIV/AIDS epidemic manifests itself both as an
immediate crisis and as a systemic condition. It is a crisis because of the pace and
intensity of transmission (in most regions the epidemic has more than quadrupled
in the past decade); and it is a systemic condition because HIV/AIDS impacts
most heavily on the most productive sectors of African population, depriving the
economy of scarce skills, children of their parents, and a country of a generation
in the prime of their working lives. As a result, the epidemic deepens poverty
and exacerbates the many social challenges resulting from weak states. While the
macroeconomic impacts are not immediately clear, we can make an educated guess
that reductions in life expectancy of the type noted in figure 2 will eventually
adversely affect economic output, particularly in countries where HIV preva-
lence is higher than 10 per cent among the adult population. We can also expect a
non-linear impact of HIV/AIDS on economic growth: the longer the high HIV
prevalence persists, the more difficult and costly recovery will become.
9
UNDP 2006.
1163
Sustaining peace in Africa: the challenge ahead

When a war erupts, as in the DRC or Darfur, most policy-makers look for a polit-
ical explanation and a political solution. This is understandable, but it misses a
basic point. It is only by understanding the role of poverty and inequality—of
resources, of access, of participation—in conflict, that we can find more sustainable
and therefore realistic solutions to conflict resolution and peacebuilding. While
so-called ‘structural causes of conflict’ are often referred to in the policy litera-
ture, seldom do they inform the responses taken by different actors to a particular
situation—or receive the same urgent attention as other conflict management
and ‘stabilization’ measures. And yet factors of a structural nature, in particular
extreme poverty, are a major cause, and predictor, of violence in Africa.
The consequences of these conflicts have seriously undermined Africa’s efforts
to ensure long-term stability, prosperity, human rights and gender equality for
its people. Ending violent conflicts and building the foundations for a democratic
economic and political order are essential prerequisites for the continent’s devel-
opment. As noted above, the transformation of the OAU into the AU has given
Africans the responsibility for, as well as a leading role in, preventing and resolving
African conflicts. In this regard, the entering into force of the protocol establishing
the Peace and Security Council (PSC) on 26 December 2003 marked a significant
milestone in Africa’s commitment to working for peace and security. The respon-
sibility to protect informs the PSC’s objective of promoting ‘peace, security and
stability in Africa, in order to guarantee the protection and preservation of life
and property, the well-being of the African people and their environment, as well
as the creation of conditions conducive to sustainable development’. Moreover,
the PSC is given the responsibility to monitor and enforce article 4(h) of the AU’s
Constitutive Act, which provides for intervention in member states in response
to war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity as well as the rejection of
unconstitutional changes of government.
Making peace is one thing; sustaining it is another. Despite African leaders’
renewed commitment under the AU to conflict prevention and democratic gover-
nance, in practice AU Member States’ voluntary contributions to AU led peace-
keeping operations (in financial and troop contribution terms) remains highly
inadequate and insufficient to the tasks in hand. Furthermore, while donors
such as the European Union (EU) have provided the bulk of the funds for peace
support operations in Africa, the international community as a whole (including
major donors as well as the United Nations) has yet to agree on a framework
for sustainable and long-term support. Without support, there is a limit to how
much certain countries can do to prevent conflict and build peace. Recent initia-
tives include AU-led peacekeeping missions in Darfur/Sudan and Somalia, and
action to strengthen laws with regard to the illicit accumulation and trafficking
of small arms and light weapons.10 But these seek to address the symptoms, not
10
G8, ‘Growth and responsibility in Africa—summit declaration, annex: summary of G8–Africa personal
representatives’ joint progress report on the G8–Africa Partnership’, G8 Summit 2007 Secretariat, Heiligen-
damm, 8 June 2007.
1164
the causes, of insecurities. In many countries, poverty and injustice remain the
principal reasons for the absence of peace. Societies damaged by years of civil war
and internal strife cannot adjust themselves overnight to the changing dynamics
of the global economy.
The present disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programmes
in post-conflict societies are a necessary but not sufficient precondition for stability
and durable peace in Africa. Peace may be defined as negative, that is, simply
the absence of war. In many societies in Africa, this would be an advance over
recent history. But security defined in terms of human security requires positive
peace: that is, the active creation of structures and agencies to address the devel-
opmental sources of injustice that promote conflict and focus security back onto
issues of state failure and the political economics of conflict. Hence, stimulating
economic growth, and thereby expanding opportunities for Africans to move out
of poverty, is essential for sustaining peace on the continent. This will depend in
turn on improving governance, attracting overseas development assistance (ODA),
addressing the debt burden and overcoming HIV/AIDS.
Improving governance
Many of the socio-economic challenges facing Africa are associated with bad
governance. In particular, corruption hinders economic growth and investment
by increasing transaction costs, and thus diverting public funds from their planned
allocations. In addition, corruption feeds on government policies that generate
rent-seekers and allow some members of the society to capture ‘unjustified profits’
by bribing government officials. Corruption can also lead to the misallocation of
public resources in violation of the law and of budgetary rules and regulations.
By diverting resources from development and increasing inequality, corruption
becomes a major obstacle to development. More than 40 African states have ratified
the UN Convention Against Corruption. However, the problem has deeper roots.
To tackle corruption, African governments ought to proceed with public sector
reforms, including ensuring appropriate pay for civil servants and enhancing
accountability of all public administrators. They could also remove import and
export quotas, some tax exemptions, non-targeted subsidies, and other policies
that grant privileges to special interest groups. Anti-corruption efforts should
include increased public–private collaboration as well as increased transparency
through improved data collection and analysis.
There is a growing consensus on what the key elements of governance reforms
in Africa should be. They include creating or strengthening institutions that foster
predictability, accountability and transparency in public affairs; promoting a free
and fair electoral process; restoring the capabilities of state institutions, especially
those in states emerging from conflict; anti-corruption measures; and enhancing
the capacity of public service delivery systems. Addressing South Africa’s National
Assembly in 2001, President Thabo Mbeki made clear his vision of NEPAD in the
following terms:
1165
This is a programme premised on African ownership, African control of the projects and
programmes, with African leaders accepting openly and unequivocally that they will play
their part in ending poverty and bringing about sustainable development . . . we have to
deal with corruption and be accountable to one another for all our actions. Clearly these
measures of ensuring democracy, good governance and the absence of wars and conflicts,
are important both for the well-being of the people of Africa and for the creation of
positive conditions for investment, economic growth and development.11
Nothing better illustrates Africa’s commitment to a new approach to governance

than the establishment of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), under
the aegis of NEPAD. Created as an instrument to which African governments
voluntarily subscribe, the APRM has developed agreed codes of governance
and incorporated a mechanism for review of adherence. About half of African
countries have acceded to the APRM and several are nearing completion of
their first review. The APRM is intended to be not an instrument for coercive
sanctions but a mechanism for joint learning, sharing of experiences and identi-
fying remedial measures to address real weaknesses. Thus, the periodic evaluation
built into the APRM process will help governments address obstacles that hinder
effective governance in their countries.
Attracting overseas development assistance

In the short to medium term NEPAD’s external capital expectations are tied more
to official inflows in the form of ODA and debt relief than to private capital inflows,
despite the continent offering the highest rates of return. This reflects the historical
fact that nowhere has foreign capital led to economic transformation in a country,
and the limited prospects for private flows relative to the continent’s massive needs.
‘From worldwide experience, private capital flows of more than 5 per cent of GDP
are unlikely to be feasible or sustainable.’12 The removal of Africa’s debt burden
is critical to the continent’s investment prospects, both through releasing money
currently spent on debt servicing for urgent public investment and improving the
image of the continent as an investment destination. Western creditor countries
and institutions such as the World Bank have hitherto resisted calls for radical debt
cancellation. The Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) mechanism, which
currently governs debt relief, is widely regarded as inadequate and criticized for
tying debt relief to reforms supervised by the IMF and World Bank. This policy
is one dimension of the new directions in the tying of aid to policy choices of the
donor countries. The Africa Action Plan adopted at the 2002 G8 meeting, with its
highly conditional pledge to support NEPAD, has been hailed as signalling a new
willingness to raise ODA to Africa, but in fact confirms the trend.13
11
President Thabo Mbeki, address to the joint sitting of the National Assembly and the National Council on the
New Partnership for Africa’s Development, 31 Oct. 2001.
12
World Bank, 2000, p. 235.
13
At the 2002 Kananaskis summit G8 leaders declared: ‘Each of us will decide, in accordance with our respec-
tive priorities and procedures, how we will allocate the additional money we have pledged. Assuming strong
African policy commitments, and given recent assistance trends, we believe that in aggregate half or more of
1166
The bright spots of private inflows illustrate both what is possible and their
limits. In 2002 foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows amounted to $11 billion, a
drop of $6 billion compared to the previous year.14 Outside the extractive sector,
the bulk of recent private flows have been for the purchase of privatized public
assets rather than investment in new enterprises, and the 2002 slowdown is directly
tied to trends in privatization.15 The few African countries, such as Lesotho, that
have recently attracted FDI outside privatization and the extractive sector have
mainly done so in labour-intensive, low value-added manufacturing, mainly
textiles. There is likely to be an expansion in this phenomenon as countries eligible
under the US Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) attract capital, seeking
to take advantage of the preferential US market access offered under the scheme.
The opportunities under AGOA are, however, circumscribed by two factors. The
first is the ending of the Agreement on Textile and Clothing, with its quota limits,
on 1 January 2005, which will open the US market to all lower-cost developing
country manufacturers. The second, closely related to the first, is the evidence of
the limits of such labour-intensive manufacturing in the form of declining terms
for such exports.16 Even if exports of labour-intensive manufactures from Africa
should expand, thereby creating jobs and incomes, commodity markets and prices
would need to stabilize to allow millions of Africans to participate effectively in
the global economy.
Addressing Africa’s debt burden

In 2006 sub-Saharan Africa’s external debt stood at US$303.6 billion, equivalent to
US$958 per person compared to the region’s average annual income per person of
just US$470. As shown in table 2, the region’s debt has grown dramatically in the
last three decades. Only since 1996, the year in which the HIPC was launched, have
debt stocks exhibited a modest reduction. To address the debt burden problem,
many African countries at first resorted to repeated debt rescheduling focused on
debt service flows, resulting in steadily increasing debt stocks and related service
payments.
As of July 2004, 23 African countries out of 27 participants were benefiting from
debt relief under the HIPC initiative. These are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon,
Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau,
Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger,
Rwanda, São Tomé and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and
our new development assistance could be directed to African nations that govern justly, invest in their own
people and promote economic freedom.’
14
Capital flows into Africa have declined greatly in real terms since the early 1980s. In 2000 the real per
capita inflows were less than a third of what they had been two decades earlier. Over the same period sub-
Saharan Africa’s share of total capital inflows to developing countries declined from more than 20% to 10%
(UNCTAD, 2001, p. 19).
15
Privatizations have played an important role in the integration of Africa’s financial markets into the global
system. The creation of stock exchanges to facilitate privatization and the fact that the shares of financial
institutions have accounted for a significant proportion of trading on most of these new exchanges have been
important contributory factors.
16
UNCTAD 2001; Akyuz 2003.
1167
Table 2: Africa's external debt, 1970–2006 ($bn)
1970–1979 1980–1989 1990–1996 1997–1999 2000–2002
a
Total debt stocks 39.3 180.5 297.2 317.3 303.6
Principal arrearsa 0.7 9.1 31.6 40.5 26.3
Total debt service paida 3.3 18.6 25.7 26.1 23.7
Total debt stocks/XGSb 91.0 195.2 242.8 217.6 168.6
Debt service paid/XGSb 7.8 20.1 21.0 17.9 13.7
Total debt paid/GDPb 24.2 51.7 67.0 61.8 54.6
XGS = exports of goods and services.

a Annual averages.
b %.
Source: UNCTAD secretariat computations based on World Bank, Global development
finance and world development indicators, online data.
Zambia.17 The total amount of debt relief committed (for the 14 completion and
the 13 decision point countries) under the original HIPC initiative and the enhanced
HIPC initiative (launched in 1999) was $54 billion in nominal terms, equivalent to
a reduction of $32 billion in net present value (NPV) terms. In 2003 NPV terms
the outstanding debt stock of the 27 countries was expected to fall from about $80
billion to $26 billion after the delivery of traditional debt relief by bilateral credi-
tors, assistance under the HIPC initiative, and additional bilateral forgiveness.
As argued in the MDG report, the appropriate amount of debt reduction should
be measured against explicit development objectives, such as those enshrined in
the MDGs themselves. The amount of debt relief would then be determined on
the basis of expected development assistance and the need to avoid a new debt
overhang. An approach along the same lines was taken by the US General Account-
ability Office (GAO), which had calculated the amount of overall additional assis-
tance needed to help achieve economic growth and sustainable debt targets for
HIPC countries. Similarly, the Commission for Africa reports that criteria for
relief should be similar to those applied for aid, focusing on the use of the resources
released for poverty reduction and growth. In line with the growing consensus on
the need for significant debt reduction for African countries, as evidenced by the
widespread support given to the proposals of the UK government, the interna-
tional community should endorse, in the context of the MDGs, a comprehensive
debt reduction to benefit all heavily indebted countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and
a substantial debt relief for middle-income countries. In the past, as in the case
of the debt write-offs for Egypt ($29 billion), Jordan ($1.4 billion), and Poland
($2.7 billion), similar relief has been provided to support countries on their path to
economic restructuring and resumed growth.
17
IMF/World Bank, ‘Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative: status of implementation’ (Washing-
ton DC: IMF/World Bank, 20 Aug. 2004), p. 7.
1168
Confronting HIV/AIDS
Across Africa, the dominant mode of HIV transmission is heterosexual contact.
Yet many people, particularly among the high-level leadership, are reluctant to
admit openly that the continent faces a crisis of shattered tradition, where poverty,
social alienation and political disaffection mean that sexuality is no longer guided
by traditional norms. Moreover, historical reluctance to speak openly about sex
and sexuality has resulted in political and religious leaders struggling to acknowl-
edge the deeper cultural crisis at the root of Africa’s AIDS epidemic. Leadership in
this area has consequently been narrowly defined as simply making references to
the epidemic in speeches and passing laws which are neither monitored nor consis-
tently enforced for efficacy. Yet, effective as laws are in offering the perception of
protection, they do not stop generalized epidemics.
Advocacy is needed to ensure political leaders include the fight against AIDS
among their primary responsibilities, as well as to mobilize and support those
willing to speak out against stigma and discrimination. More also needs to be
done to tackle HIV-related stigma and discrimination in relation to other forms
of inequality and exclusion through the promotion of multisectoral action, for
example by means of broad-based alliances between organizations working in
HIV prevention and care and those working in other fields such as gender equality,
sustainable development and rights. There is evidence that many NGOs are slowly
but surely beginning to bring HIV/AIDS into the mainstream of their work, but
governments need to do more. In the struggle against HIV/AIDS, leaders are
challenged to use their capacity to influence their people in a positive way—to
create a national social environment that hinders the spread of the disease and cares
for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA).
There are two further elements which go some way to providing an answer to
the question of how Africa’s HIV/AIDS crisis might best be addressed. The first is
the provision of treatment for PLWHA on the continent. The reduction in the cost
of anti-retroviral (ARV) and other drugs has significantly changed the possibilities
for such treatment. As treatment sustains the health and prolongs the lives of those
infected, increased access to treatment has the potential to reduce the socio-economic
cost of the epidemic on the continent. The real costs of the epidemic to societies and
economies are much greater than those usually quantified by economists, and so the
benefits from treating people will also be greater, once there is a full accounting for
the losses. These costs are to a significant degree socio-economic, and are largely
avoidable through increasing access to treatment. Thus the costs of inactivity in
conditions of weak access to treatment are much greater than the UNAIDS estimate
of losses of 2.6 per cent of GDP annually, once all of the direct and indirect costs
of the epidemic are factored into the analysis. There is a separate and powerful case
to be made in respect of access to ARV therapies for pregnant women, which can
substantially reduce HIV transmission from mother to child through programmes
that are relatively inexpensive and clearly beneficial to both mothers and infants.
The benefits are, of course, not confined to the direct beneficiaries but also accrue to
society as a whole.
1169
The second element is human capacity planning. In the face of HIV/AIDS,
national policy-makers must sustain and improve the pool of human resources. In
most countries it is still the case that most workers are free of HIV infection and are
productively employed. It follows that keeping the labour force free of HIV infec-
tion through an expansion of prevention activities must become a priority every-
where. It should not be assumed by the national planning process that public services
can continue to be supported with the present establishments, and innovative ways
of delivering educational, health and other services that make less intensive use of
human resources must be developed. It is clear that responding to the present losses of
skilled and professional labour through an expansion of existing training programmes
will rapidly become too costly for national budgets. New ways of delivering essen-
tial public services need to be developed and implemented, and less costly ways of
meeting the needs for skilled and professionally qualified labour need to be identified
and delivered.
Conclusion
Redefining security in Africa is fundamentally a problem of sustainable develop-
ment. It is a classic ‘catch-22’: chronic underdevelopment in Africa has generated
the conflicts that have merely served to intensify the conditions of underdevelop-
ment and the economic and social injustices that lead to further conflict. Where to
break the cycle? In the past the answers were sought at the level of the state. But,
as is often noted in commentaries, the state in Africa has been much less part of
the solution and rather more a major part of Africa’s security problems. The signs
of a shift in perspective to a people-centred approach, embodied in the emergent
structures and agencies of the AU institutional framework, in civil societal initia-
tives and in the discourses engaged in by Africa’s intelligentsia hold out some
promise. But the challenges within sub-Saharan Africa to the tentative consensus
of support for the current human developmental security focus clearly remain
substantial and threaten to unravel the process of positive change. Pan-Africanism,
redefined in contemporary terms, is promoting positive change. But this can only
take the process so far. The international community’s role in providing sustained
support to the initiatives being promoted in Africa by Africans, grounded in the
developmental needs of everyday existence faced by millions of Africans, there-
fore remains critical and inescapable.
1170

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Human Security and Development in Africa

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Human security and development in Africa

NANA K. POKU, NEIL RENWICK AND JOAO GOMES PORTO

The concept and practices of security have experienced a global redeﬁnition

International Affairs 83: 6 (2007) 1155–1170

Rethinking security in Africa

Development and human security

Figure 2: Changes in life expectancy in four countries, 1980–1985 to 2005–

Source: UN DESA/Population Division 2007; projection made by mid-term review team.

Sustaining peace in Africa: the challenge ahead

Nothing better illustrates Africa’s commitment to a new approach to governance

Attracting overseas development assistance

Addressing Africa’s debt burden

XGS = exports of goods and services.

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