Africa Works

One of my favorite Africans died the other day. Guido Sohne, a brilliant software programmer who worked for Microsoft in Nairobi, was found dead in his living room on Monday. People discovered him when he didn’t turn up for work. Guido and I go back some years; he was a close companion when I lived in Accra in 2003. Guido was witty and sharp and always ready to debate arcane points, either about technology or development. We spent many hours together and, when my teenage son visited Accra for a summer, Guido tutored him on computer games that bewildered me.

Guido was from Accra and had only moved to Nairobi late last year to join Microsoft. A passionate and principled person, Guido was well known in Africa’s small circle of programmers. Born in 1973, he attended Princeton University and returned to Ghana to work in computing. For some years he was a fixture in Busyinternet, the Accra web cafe founded by the Welch entrepreneur Mark Davies. Guido long promoted open-source software as a way of Africans gaining a stronger position in information technology, and his move to Microsoft was a large shift for him. His belief in the potential of a single smart African to change the world remains a source of hope for me and others who knew him. He was a singular person in the region and he will be missed.

An opening salvo of mine on a widening debate over how Africans — who have in recent years imported as much as $2 billion worth of rice — can raise their own production of the critical crop. With rice prices sharply higher in recent months, the question of which policies can provide more self-reliance is critical. See my poist this week on Foreign Policy’s site for the view from Uganda. Through wise government policies and shrewd investment, rice production in the country has soared.

None would begrudge the heads of African nations for their failure to criticize one another if behind closed doors they could gather the will and imagination to resolve the most flagrant leadership lapses on their vast turf. This weekend South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki described as “normal” the collapse of fair elections in Zimbabwe. Mbeki made his comment at a meeting of African leaders designed to end the electoral stalemate in Zimbabwe — and perhaps set the country on the right track. Mbeki has long spared Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s dictatorial president, the lash of public criticism. Yet why not at least lash Mugabe in private? After, Zimbabwe’s current plight — including its broken electoral process — is neither nor healthy under any definition.

Mugabe chose not to attend the meeting, a clear snub to Mbeki, whose country is the regional powerhouse in southern Africa. Imagine what praise Mbeki might have heaped on Mugabe had he merely attended the meeting!

Some of the same flair theater without pragmatism was also displayed this weekend in Kenya, where Odinga and Kibaki continue to struggle to forge a workable governing coalition (though reports of a new “compromise deal” say details were revealed today). To be sure, such coalitions are very difficult to create from the soup of intensely-rivalrous politics. Yet the continued uncertainty over the specifics of Kenya’s political settlement surely can’t help the country’s once-booming economy get back to “normal.”

Closed-door deals aren’t helping in Cameroon either, where President Paul Biya — in power since the early 1980s — seems to be winning over members of the country’s weak Parliament in a bid to permit Biya to for what he calls his “third term,” but what would actually be “only” his third term since he allowed “contested” elections. But since these are Zimbabwe-style elections, they are really not elections at all

The Economist in its new issue examines the peculiar relationship between the U.S. Department of Defense and the government of Ethiopia, whose armed forces occupy parts of Somalia at the behest of the Bush administration. Quietly, the U.S.-Ethiopia military alliance has become the most important in sub-Saharan Africa. The Economist tallies some of the relative costs and benefits of the relationship. Unasked is the question, will it endure the change of administrations in Washington? Democrats have questioned the special treatment given to Ethiopia by the Pentagon under Bush. Come January, the Democratic rhetoric may turn into action — and spell the end of the alliance with Ethiopia.

Are Robert Mugabe’s days numbered? Can he possible engineer a “dignified” exit from his role of Africa’s most decorated dictator?

The news reports this week suggest that Mugabe may finally be history. He has lost control of the Parliament, and he can’t possible win a presidential run-off against a single candidate. So say journalists and observers near the scene. I am far away, in California, a new term at Stanford starting and Zimbabwe seemingly far away. Yet Zimbabwe is one of those places where distance makes the heart grow fonder — and the mind clearer.

Once Africa’s breadbasket, Zimbabwe was the first of the “apartheid” post-colonial states to give way to a black-run government. Mugabe did well for a time as Zimbabwe’s economic steward. That is easy to forget. Since 2000, he’s been unhinged, bent on wrecking the economy by driving out both energetic white farmers and talented black professionals, merchants and even laborers. State-failure does not begin to describe Zimbabwe’s condition. Indeed, Mugabe’s ability to hold together a state that offers nothing to his people represents a new disease model in the pathologies of African governance. Even today, opponents of Mugabe act as if they can inherit a functioning state apparatus that will bounce back like a dry plant that gets proper watering.

The world will see what Zimbabwe has left after the ravages of Mugabe; the big question is how soon will the old man go? The sudden optimism regarding an imminent departure may prove misplaced. Mugabe’s henchmen may see a presidential run-off as easier to rig and another electoral campaign may serve, in their twisted minds, merely to flush more Mugabe opponents into the open.

Keep shedding tears for Zimbabweans. Their cheers and joy cannot yet be heard.

Robert Bates, the Harvard scholar on African politics, has a new book out, “When Things Fell Apart,” about state-failure in late 20th century Africa. Bates is justly famous among students of Africa for his seminal book on states and markets in Africa, published some quarter-century ago. His new book aims to describe why African societies — and the governments that serve them — did so poorly even after recognizing the importance of markets. His book, while brief, is studded with great insights and, to my eyes, intended as a counterweight to reductionist arguments by others, notably the Oxford professor Paul Collier and Columbia’s Jeff Sachs, that the African state is essentially powerless in the face of wars over “greed and grievance” or geographic forces that isolate and undermine political actors. In a bid to undercut the ciricularity of these arguments, Bates tries to put politics — as a human activity — back in the center of the African condition. His diagnosis of the problem is familiar, but his suggested remedies are not.
Reading Bates, who writes in his new book that “electoral competition and state failure go together,” is an excellent companion to those trying to make sense out of Zimbabwe’s farcical eletions this weekend — or even the prolonged political stalemate in Kenya, where narrow election results highlights the importance, not of electoral contests, but of the benefits of power-sharing, regional autonomy and the necessity of a new winner-not-take-all electoral structure.

The editor of Britain’s “Africa Confidential” newsletter, Patrick Smith, has penned a wonderful analysis of the political situation in Cameroon, where ghost-like president, Paul Biya, is making noises that he wants to rule for another 10 years. Biya already has lorded over Cameroon for a quarter of a century, during which time the national government has slid into such disrepair that it exists in name only. Biya is seeking an amendment to the constitition that will allow him to run again in the sham presidential elections that are the cornerstone of his spurious claim that Cameroon is a functioning democracy.

Protests against Biya’s rule are rare, but the president’s desire for more years in power has critics speaking out — and even taking to the streets.

Paul Biya, Africa’s longest running ruler, is facing unrest in usually-quiet Cameroon. Biya’s usual tactic is to ignore complaints — and even urgent problems — and even his entire country — out of a belief that the less he does, the better Cameroonians are. In response to a recent suggestion that he might seek another term in office, dissent broke into the open — in the form of a four-day national strike — and Biya responded with a crackdown and a media ban. When dissent persisted, he took the unusual step of raising the salaries of civil servants by 15 percent — an amount that might sound fine until one realizes that salaries had not been raised since the 1990s.

The protest against Biya continued in Washington on Friday, with concerned Cameroonians living in America taking part. More protests are likely. Whether Biya deserves a dignified end to his long rule over Cameroon is an open question. There is no question however that he does not deserve another term in office. He should be arranging for diginifed retirement now.

The unrest in Cameroon, sparked by Paul Biya’s decision to seek another term as president (an office he already illegally and immorally occupies), makes me weep. Among the best endowed nations in the world — both in terms of landscape, ferility of its soil, and talents of its people — Cameroon has been condemned to suffer awful political rule. Even by African standards, Biya’s 25-year reign over this picturesque West African country has been a disaster. While he has rarely organized killing sprees, he quietly has demolished country that ought to be among the most successful, not only in Africa, but in the developing world. Instead of planning a permanent retirement somewhere in Europe (where he seems to spend a great deal of time anyway), Biya wants to inflict more wounds on his long-suffering countrymen. What a shame. Biya is a president who rarely holds meetings with his ministers and he refuses to allow his government to even publish a phoney budget. He is indeed a ghost (his nickname in the country). I am sad at the thought he may haunt Cameroon for years more.

The Financial Times published a fascinating account of the pro-birth sentiments in Uganda, which the newspaper described as having the youngest population in the world. At its current pace, according to demographers, Uganda’s population will double every 23 years, exceeding 50 million by 2020. Yet birth control is an alien concept in Uganda, even though an estimated one in three pregnancies are unwanted. Elite Ugandans, meanwhile, seem profoundly ambivalent about population growth, captivated by a illusory notion that a large domestic market, defined as a large population within the country’s borders, will insure economic prosperity. The notion is nonsensical. Uganda would sooner prosper if the government threw open its borders to millions of Chinese migrants. Adult immigration produces a far greater economic stimulus than higher birth rates. Those kids take a long time to grow up into productive workers, and they cost society a lot in the process. If Ugandans really want to use population policies to promote growth, they would be wooing immigrants — not having more babies per woman than practically any other nation on the planet.