Dr Kwameh Nkrumah           Photo courtesy

On 21 September 2009, the peoples of Africa celebrated the 100th birthday anniversary of the late Kwame Nkrumah, a one-time fervent proponent of Pan-Africanism. This was in accordance with a Declaration adopted by the Assembly of the African Union at its 13th Ordinary Session in Sirte, Libya, on 1-3 July 2009. The Declaration on the Celebration of the 100th Birthday Anniversary of Kwame Nkrumah called on all AU Member States to celebrate the life of this great African leader on 21 September 2009. 

Nkrumah, the man who played a pivotal role in the establishment of the OAU and the liberation of the Continent, was inspired by the African-American educated elite who had propagated Pan-Africanism long before him. He adopted a radical pan-African strategy, emphasizing the urgency of unity and cooperation among African states. His dream was somehow fulfilled when his efforts led to the successful establishment of the OAU in 1963. Although the OAU faced many challenges with inter-state wars and collapsed states, it is credited for having brought about liberation for most of Africa and hastened the demise of apartheid thereby laying the foundation for a majority rule in South Africa in 1994.

The post-apartheid espousal of an African Renaissance, as characterized by the transformation of the OAU into the AU and the adoption of NEPAD as a developmental programme of the AU, made possible discussions over the relevance and potential of Pan-Africanism in the 21st century and helped broaden the political space in which Africa’s future could be debated. These developments saw debates about Pan-Africanism taking a new form. Unlike Nkrumah who applied Pan-Africanism to the struggle against imperialism, the 21st century advocates of Pan-Africanism – and those who are receptive to this noble ideal - urge continental leaders to take stock of Africa’s internal factors, with a view to determining the extent to which these factors contribute to continental development.  Influencing this thinking is the new ‘global consensus’ on the need to vigorously pursue the millenium development goals (MDGs) as enunciated in the UN Millennium Declaration.

As the current global financial circumstance has shown, the pursuit of the MDGs and the broader millennium development agenda require strong states. Therefore, one dimension of the new global consensus is the revival of the state to make it better able to discharge its basic responsibilities. As noted by the Right Honourable Prime Minister Nahas Angula of Namibia,¹ the state must exist to perform two major functions. Firstly, it must deliver services to the people. Secondly, it must lead the process of socio-economic transformation. 

The challenge for Africa is the weak state. In this regard, the NEPAD strategy document states that “today, the weak state remains a major constraint to sustainable development in a number of countries. Indeed, one of Africa’s major challenges is to strengthen the capacity to govern and develop long-term policies. At the same time, there is also the urgent need to implement far-reaching reforms and programmes in many African states.”²  Hence emerging from the AU and NEPAD is emphasis on the indispensability of good governance in Africa’s quest for sustainable development. The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) also emerges out of this particular context as an instrument for improving governance, peer learning and experience sharing in Africa.  These developments are borne out of the acknowledgement that, while the collective vision of the leaders who pursued Pan-Africanism in the post-independence period was a continental imperative, their failure to entrench democracy and good governance in their own countries, limited continental development to a large degree.

In contrast to Nkrumah’s pan-African strategy, there is now an enhanced focus on transforming dependent African economies so that they are best placed to address the challenge of poverty and underdevelopment. The acknowledgement of the organic linkage between public service effectiveness and sustainable development has necessitated that Africa re-evaluates the codes and principles of its own public administration effectiveness to make a determination whether or not they are best designed to contribute to the fight against poverty and underdevelopment. This re-evaluation, as Richard Levin observes, has “led to the search for ‘capable states’ that are able, inter alia, to implement the millennium development goals, fight poverty, establish a sound macro economic framework, conduct democratic elections, fight corruption and establish people-centred decentralized service delivery mechanisms underpinned by sound systems of public administration.”³ 

Thus, the adoption of the revised African Charter on Principles and Values of Public Administration by the 6^th Pan-African Conference of Ministers for Public Service in October 2008 is illustrative of the desire on the part of the continental leaders to place public service effectiveness at the heart of Africa’s development agenda. The Charter is a Pan-African transformation tool for the continent’s public service as it establishes codes and principles and consolidates rules of professional ethics.  Upon the completion of the review by AU Member States’ legal experts, the adopted Charter will be presented to the Assembly of the AU for ratification. Once ratified by the AU Assembly, the Charter will be an instrument for adoption and ratification by individual AU Member States.⁴

While recognizing the AU Member State’s different political and socio-economic trajectories, the Charter provides an important framework within which they can and should transform their public services.  AU member states can apply the Charter both collectively and individually to confront and address their public service challenges as a means towards attending to the continent’s most pressing developmental needs. It is in this sense that the Charter must be seen as an instrument to enhance the role of government in Africa’s development process.

Francis Fukuyama⁵ opines that there is a very critical dimension of stateness, namely the strength of government. He observes that while the scope of the state relates to the range of activities it undertakes, the strength of the state relates to its ability to execute those activities and effectively enforce laws.  This ability and effectiveness of the state also means its ‘willingness’ and ‘preparedness’, firstly, to conceive its developmental mission and, secondly to construct its legitimacy to the people.   In this context Sipho Buthelezi,⁶ Peter Evans⁷  and Thandika Mkhandawire⁸  in their respective works talk of both the ideological and structural dimensions of a developmental state.  Richard Levin agrees elsewhere with their observations and correctly points out that a developmental state must be revolutionary; it must be continually willing and able to change in order to respond to the changing material conditions.⁹ 

What these scholars are all agreeable to is the indispensability of government in the development processes.  It is thus instructive that while Nkrumah’s 100^th birthday anniversary is still fresh in our minds, we do well to remember that one of Africa’s greatest assets is its governments, which must be at the forefront of the conscious efforts to entrench democracy and good governance and place their people, both within their countries and throughout the continent, on a path of sustainable development. This requires that government leaders understand that, while the pursuit of the unity of purpose at the continental level is a vital part of Africa’s contribution to world peace and stability to which Nkrumah so often referred in his quest to liberate and unite Africa, national developmental efforts must be driven by capable, developmental governments. Richard Levin puts this point emphatically when he argues that “the developmental challenge facing the continent requires democratic developmental states.”¹⁰  As he puts it, “… developmental states are able to foist a national process of economic and social development by among other things being able to articulate a national vision of transformation and mobilising society around that vision.”¹¹ 

While Nkrumah’s vision of a united Africa certainly did inspire and prompt many to carry on his dream, his myopic view of the state and the role of national political leadership in driving the development agenda was a major setback to his otherwise great vision. The truth, as Francis Kornegay¹²  of the Centre for Policy Studies opines elsewhere, is that the role of the African developmental state is to ensure human security. The African developmental state, according to him, should refocus the continent’s reconstruction and recovery agenda around the human security matrix – basic safety and security, health care, shelter and opportunities for decent jobs - and that the way the state has to respond to these is to create a framework for good governance. For Jerry Kuye¹³ of the University of Pretoria, the creation of such a framework requires that there be an embodiment of certain values in the public service.

In a concurring tone, the UNDP states that “The Millennium Declaration recognises good governance, of which public administration is a central part, as the means for achieving the goals of the Declaration. Support to modernizing state institutions is linked to achieving the MDGs in several ways. First, more resources in poor countries are freed to be used in pursuit of MDG goals if the efficiency of the public administration is increased. Second, by increasing transparency and eradicating corruption, fewer scarce resources in poor countries will be misdirected away from achieving MDGs. Third, a public administration that responds to the needs of citizens, especially women and marginalized people, is critical to ensuring the sustainability of the achievements within the rubric of the MDGs. Finally, increasing the accountability of state institutions is an essential feature of governments’ strategies to close the democratic deficit, which is key to achieving the MDGs within the context of the broader Millennium Declaration.”¹⁴

The struggle to unite Africa and to create conditions for a better life for all will, and certainly must, continue. Central to that struggle, however, must be the mobilisation and deployment of the necessary resources to improve Africa’s public service effectiveness, so that indeed the impact of a liberated and united Africa is manifest in the changes of the material conditions of her people.

By Zamokwakhe Ludidi Somhlaba,

Deputy Director for African Affairs at the Department of Public Service and Administration in Pretoria. He writes in his personal capacity.

Footnotes 

¹Prime Minister Angula during live proceedings at the Africa Public Service Day celebrations, 23 June 2005, in Pretoria. 

²NEPAD base document, 2001, para 23

³Richard Levin  “Developing the Public Service and Administrative Capacity of the State in Africa”, a paper presented at the 6th Conference of African Ministers for Public /Civil Service in Midrand, South Africa, 11-15 October 2008

⁴Although the revised Draft Charter was adopted, the 6th Conference of African Ministers for Public /Civil Service resolved that it should be referred to Member States’ legal experts for further refinement before it is presented to the Assembly of the African Union for ratification.

⁵Francis Fukuyama, 2004. State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century, New York: Cornell University Press.

⁶Sipho Buthelezi during live proceedings of the Africa Public Service Day celebrations, 23 June 2005 at  University of Fort Hare. 

⁷See Richard Levin Levin, October 2008 op cit, p.11.

⁸Ibid.

⁹Richard Levin during live proceedings of the Africa Public Service Day celebrations, 23 June 2005, Pretoria.

¹⁰Richard Levin October 2008 op cit, p.11.

¹¹Ibid.

¹²Francis Kornegay during live proceedings of the Africa Public Service Day celebrations, 23 June 2005, Pretoria.

¹³Jerry Kuye during live proceedings of the Africa Public Service Day celebrations, 23 June 2005, Pretoria.

¹⁴UNDP’s Public Administration Reform Practice Note document, http://www.undp.org/governance/docs/PARPN_English.pdf