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The International Community and Africa’s Democracy Construct

Commentary/Africa Development

More than ever as Africa gets entwined in the international system, the international community is becoming increasingly part of Africa’s development. Ever more, the international community includes the ever-growing Africans working in numerous international organizations and diasporan Africans across the world’s capitals whose transmission of billions of dollars annually to Africa have given them immense influence on their homelands.

Most times, the international community is the last resort in resolving Africa’s self-inflicted complications, especially in the face of frightening leadership as we saw in Nigeria under Gen. Sani Abacha and his associates. The reasons vary Africa-wide, but the constantly ringing arguments are feeble political leadership and weak institutions. Against these backgrounds, international pressure to democratize for stability and development are impacted on African countries where threats of coup d’etats, weak economies, fragile underdeveloped infrastructure, and unstable domestic authority structures are strongly prominent.

As Sierra Leone, Liberia and Burundi reveal under such dire conditions sovereignty is eroded and Africans hopelessly suffer, gapping for mortal help in the face deadly unstable domestic authority structures. Under such condition, as the American thinker Francis Fukuyama argues in State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century, “sovereignty and therefore legitimacy could no longer be automatically conferred on the de facto power holder in a country. State sovereignty was a fiction or bag joke in the case of countries like Somalia, which has descended into rule by warlords.”

In such situations, the “international community,” as Francis Fukuyama contends, “ceased to be an abstraction and took on palpable presence as the effective government of the country in question.”

When ex-Cote d’Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede power after loosing the November, 2010 presidential elections, the international community, sensing more deaths and destruction of properties, helped not only remove Laurent Gbagbo from power but before that cut-off the Gbagbo regime from all Ivorian funds and diplomatic relations, sending his diplomats abroad packing.

The same treatment was rendered to Niger when the military took over power from President Mamadou Tandja. On April 7, 2011, Mahamadou Issoufou, of the Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism (PNDS-Tarayya), became President after successful multiparty elections.

Tied to foreign aid, international investments and diplomatic influence, as democratic Ghana and Botswana show and are enjoying, the  idea is linked to the international community’s policy of “democracy promotion” in the world. This is part of the international community’s   international development architecture. As Nigeria’s elections show, initially elections may not be free and fair, but overtime it becomes better. The April16, 2011 elections in Nigeria was better than the one in 2007.

Whether dealing with African civil wars, post-conflict countries, coup d’etats, post-elections crisis, or political instability, distressed Africans point to the international community for decisive help as countries in Africa’s Great Lake Region show. The assistance is made more critical because of the fact that most African countries depend on international donors for their budget sustenance.

However, increasingly, the African diasporan financial remittances are matching up with foreign financial aids. But the problem with the African diasporan remittances is that it is not organized as a force for political reforms but individuals sending money to families. Sometimes, diasporan groups lobby international institutions and foreign governments for certain actions against definite African situations when need arises.  This makes their collective force on African issues, superlatively, frail. So the real force to help change difficult African issues such as building democracy for greater development, rest, in the final analysis, on the international community’s assistance.

But the international community could be a problem in the democratization of Africa. Patricia Daley, a human geographer at Oxford University, argues that what happens in Africa’s democratization process is that if African elites sorely take hold of the democratic process without fully bringing African traditional institutions on board, the elites, mimicking the West, allow the international development community to commandeer the democratic process, who usually do not understand the African sensibilities, and with their lack of control and dearth of knowledge, mess up the democratic process.

Regardless of this, the international community becomes the last card in helping build democracies in Africa. Latest research by political scientists Hein Goemans (of University of Rochester) and Nikolay Marinov (of Yale University) about post-coup d’etats African countries, under immense pressure to survive, is most likely to transit to democratic practices as soon as possible. The successful stories of Sierra Leone and Liberia demonstrate the investigations by Goemans and Marinov.

Entitled “Putsch for Democracy: The International Community and Elections After the Coup,” Goemans and Marinov point out, using most of their data from African coup d’etats and elections, that before 1991 majority of successful African coups installed their leaders in power. The picture changes dramatically between 1991 and 2001 – with most African coup d’etats leading to competitive elections, in five years or less. Niger, the Central African Republic and Guinea-Conakry come to mind. In this sense, Post-Cold War Africa has progressively seen conflict-ridden African states under immense pressure by the international community to democratize through timely competitive elections. Goemans and Marinov characterize this as the “electoral norm.”

In Sierra Leone, rumour had it that military junta Head of State, Brigadier-General Julius Maada Bio, despite promises to hold competitive elections after Sierra Leone’s 11-year-old civil war had thought privately of reneging and transforming himself into civilian President, as Ghana’s Ft. Lt. Jerry Rawlings did. But unrelenting international pressure, in addition to the diasporan Sierra Leonean lobby, forced Gen. Bio to hold on to his public pledge.

The result was Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, of the Sierra Leone People’s Party, winning the presidential elections and becoming President in March 29, 1996 – May 25, 1997 and March 10, 1998 – September 17, 2007. For this, post-conflict Sierra Leone is profoundly donor-dependent and over 60 percent of its national budget  comes from the international community. In total Sierra Leone receives over US$300m annually in international aid.

Most African countries that depend heavily on international development aid are easily the first to go for competitive elections, after coup d’etat, civil war or political crisis. Goemans and Marinov hypothesis is that since 1990s there have been decline in illegal seizure of power in Africa. In this context, the current African political picture is that coup d’etats (which normally lead to civil wars and political instabilities) is the most important case for toppling African democracies.

Goemans and Marinov explains that their “ … findings indicate that the new generation of coups have been considerably less nefarious for democracy than their historical predecessors.” What is striking in Goemans and Marinov supposition is that “outside pressure” has surely engendered “electoral norms,” that have dissuaded “coup-entrepreneurs.”

One of the success stories of the “electoral norms” is Sierra Leone. Dubbed Britain’s sore “successful humanitarian intervention,” Sierra Leone continues to be held up by former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, as proof of the success of the “new doctrine of international community” he introduced in 1999. With threats of coup d’etat, weak economy, brittle underdeveloped infrastructure, and unbalanced domestic power structures, the only development card for post-conflict Sierra Leone to play was with the “new doctrine of international community.”

In its struggle to play well with the doctrine of the international community, today, Sierra Leone is one of the fast growing democracies in Africa. Formerly at the bottom of the UN Human Development Index that measures human well-being, Sierra Leone has risen dramatically to the 158th rank out of 167 countries ranked in 2010.

Whether dealing with coup-entrepreneurs, post-conflict actors/groups or political volatilities, the international community, through its famed unrelenting pressure and provision of critical financial aid, has forced various out-of-place African actors/groups to ensure that key institutions of the African state, as Errol Mendes, a constitutional and international law expert at the University of Ottawa, Canada, explains, “are subject to the rule of law and respect the fundamental rights … This means focusing on the imperative of an independent judiciary, a free media, an independent election commission, security forces cleansed as much as possible, and ensuring that forces do not terrorize the people.”

The ability to nurture these democratic tenets in Africa, as Oxford University’s Patricia Daley argues, is how to deal with limitations the international community finds itself in grasping the nuances of traditional Africa values, that are supposed to be lubricant for authentic democratization of Africa.

International pressure or not, significant financial support or not, Ghana, Botswana, Sierra Leone, Mauritius, Nigeria, among others, exhibit that democracy has to be a homegrown enterprise, with the citizens acknowledging its mammoth attributes to their ultimate progress. In this logic, Goemans and Marinov divulge that “democratic norms have a far better chance of taking root in a country if some minimum procedural trappings of democratic government can be maintained over time.”

This makes the delicate work of democracy building and the fostering of development in Africa by the international community sometimes convoluted. In Africa today, as Goemans and Marinov’s research discloses, coup-entrepreneurs, post-conflict actors/groups or perpetuators of political volatilities really “care about the attitude of the international community.” Conversely, the international community as well cares about “the dangers of irregular transfer of power” in Africa.

As an advancement undertaking, as Kofi Abrefa Busia, the late Prime Minister of Ghana and a democracy philosopher, enthused in The Prospects For Democracy in Africa, this makes democracy building in Africa a deeply faithful enterprise that should be driven by Africans’ traditional values. A realistic venture that should be informed by the African facts of fear of coup d’etats, weak economies, fragile underdeveloped infrastructure, and wobbly domestic authority configuration.

If you like this article, I’d recommend my book “If I Was Famous, I’d Have a Lot to Say”

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West Africa’s Democratic Evolution – African or Western?

Special Commentary/West Africa

For sometime, the centre of Africa’s anarchic one-party systems, gory tyrants, brutal dictatorships, self-serving military juntas and hideous civil wars, West Africa is changing and indisputably sowing democratic seeds. Whether in Cape Verde, Liberia, Guinea-Conakry, Niger, Nigeria or Guinea Bissau multi-party elections are blowing across the once politically sick region.

The only black sheep today is Senegal’s Casamance conflict, which is still on-going. But as West Africa’s democracy deepens, the Casamance conflict can surely be solved with democratic ideals, as the Liberian, Guinea Bissau and Sierra Leonean cases show. Continue reading “West Africa’s Democratic Evolution – African or Western?”

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North African Women Press for Freedom, Rights and Dignity

By Fatma Naib
Cairo

Arab women have shown that women can play important roles in revolutionary events. In Egypt and Tunisia they participated in the popular uprisings for democracy. “The women contributed equally to the revolution, like the men,” affirms Emna Ben Jemaa, a Tunisian lecturer and journalist. “We took part in protests in the street, without any discrimination against us.”

Women’s activism is not a recent development, notes Ms. Jemaa. “For Tunisian women, independence is not something that came with the revolution, it has been there.” Before national independence in 1955, Tunisian women faced discrimination. They were taken out of school, forbidden to see male doctors and limited in the political sphere. Yet during this period Tunisian women developed began fighting to advance their role.

With independence, President Habib Bourguiba helped advance the role of women. A “Personal Status Code,” adopted in 1956, gave women unprecedented rights including the right to vote and to be elected to parliament, to receive wages equal to those of men, access to mixed-gender education and the right to divorce.

As a result, the women’s movement in Tunisia is relatively advanced compared to those in other Middle Eastern countries, notes Ms. Jemaa. This paved the way for their prominent involvement in the revolution that toppled President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali on January 14.

After President Ali’s ouster, members of the previously banned Islamist Nahda Party returned to the country. The party will be allowed to participate in Tunisia’s elections, but that does not worry Ms. Jemaa.

“People assume that Islamism would interfere with women’s rights and freedom. But this is not necessarily correct,” she says. “When Islam came to mankind, women used to work and played an active role in society. So I don’t understand why people assume that the presence of an Islamist political party will lead to the exclusion of women.”

However, Ms. Jemaa admits that there are fears of a backlash for women’s freedom if the country is ruled by a religious party. “People look at the examples of Algeria and Iran. History has proven that there is no guarantee that an Islamic party such as al-Nahda will secure women’s rights.” So Tunisians need to be on guard, she concludes.

The revolution in Tunisia inspired people in Egypt on 25 January to demand freedom and dignity. But even before the uprising, female factory workers had staged major strikes in 2007 in the city of Mahallah.

In Egypt women accounted for 40 to 50 per cent of the demonstrators during the 18 days that toppled President Hosni Mubarak. With and without veils, they set up barricades, shouted slogans and risked their lives. The idea that men and women should be different was set aside. Nawara Najm, an Egyptian journalist and human rights activist, recalls how she fought side by side with the men. “When we had to fight, I fought. When we had to hurl stones, I did. When we had to shout slogans, I did.”

On 28 January, dubbed the “day of rage,” she and other women helped mobilize the resistance. “When the police clashes intensified and the shooting escalated, some of the guys would retreat. At that point all the women would push to the front. When our male fellow revolutionaries would see us do that, they would return immediately.”

That day also brought Ms. Najm’s worst memory, when a person died next to her. “We were on the bridge by the Nile. What upset me was that his death was preventable, but we couldn’t call an ambulance. I tried to use my phone, but the lines were cut. Then he shut his eyes. I asked if he was asleep, but another person told me that he had passed away.”

For Ms. Najm, the revolution is ongoing. “We managed to topple the head of the regime, but the entire regime is not gone yet and our key demands have not been met.

“I am not too worried about the Muslim Brotherhood having political power. They are a political organization that has the same right as everyone else. No one can stand in the way of the people anymore.”

Salma El Tarzi, a film maker, echoes Ms. Najm. “I am not into any political parties. I prefer to remain neutral for now. I know I will always be in the ‘opposition,’ so I am ready to demonstrate, or fight.”

Ms. Tarzi is agitated as she speaks about how soldiers cleared Tahrir Square on 9 March: “They violently dispersed the crowd and arrested several activists, including women who had to undergo forced virginity tests. Those who failed the tests and were not married were charged with prostitution.”

Nabila Ramdani, a French political analyst of Algerian origin, compares women’s roles in Tunisia and Egypt with their situation in the 1954-1962 Algerian independence war. “Women played an important role in the battle for Algerian independence. They planted bombs and acted as informants.” She blames a mixture of religion, culture and law for the current state of affairs in Algeria. But in post-revolution Tunisia, she adds, the voice of women is louder because it is a secular society, with a distinction between religion and the rule of law.

Ms. Ramdani is optimistic about the future, because women are speaking up as is evident in the Arab world, including in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. In Saudi Arabia, where women are banned from driving, several women drivers have posted videos online showing themselves defying the ban. “It was previously unthinkable that women there would defy the king.”

Women in different parts of the region face different challenges. While some countries have accomplished more, it seems that women in the Arab world want their voices to be heard. They want their basic human rights to be respected in societies that are free and fair for all.

Africa Renewal www.un.org/africarenewal

Fatma Naib is a reporter for the Al Jazeera news network.

If you like this article, I’d recommend my book “If I Was Famous, I’d Have a Lot to Say”

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Africa’s Group of 33

Since 1971 when the least developed countries (LDCs) category was created by the UN, sub-Saharan African countries have dominated the list. Four decades later, with 33 members (only 14 of the region’s 47 countries are not LDCs), sub-Saharan Africa still maintains the biggest regional presence in the group. All parts of the sub-continent are represented. In recent years, two countries from the continent, Botswana and Cape Verde, have graduated out of the category. Analysts say others (including Angola and Equatorial Guinea) have the potential to join them. However, the newly created state of South Sudan is widely expected join the LDCs group.

Africa’s LDCs are a highly diverse group, but most have in common an average growth of around 5 per cent in recent years. Of these countries, oil exporters (Angola, Chad, Equatorial Guinea and Sudan) and mineral producers (the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique and Zambia) benefited most from the surge in demand for commodities, mainly from the emerging economies of China, India and Brazil. Such a trend has led to an increased dependence of their economies on primary commodities, according to the latest Least Development Countries Report of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

One feature of African LDCs is their high rates of return on foreign direct investments, at around 13 per cent. UNCTAD says that investing in LDCs is a smart move. “Rates of return on foreign direct investment … are much higher than on investment in developed, or even other developing, countries.”

* Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia.

Africa Renewal www.un.org/africarenewal
If you like this article, I’d recommend my book “If I Was Famous, I’d Have a Lot to Say”
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African Economies up to The Global Challenge?

By André-Michel Essoungou
Istanbul

Two foreign shoe sellers were once sent to Africa in search of new customers. At the sight of locals marching barefoot, the first retreated in despair. The second rejoiced at the untapped market. He ordered thousands of shoes, sold them to locals and became a wealthy man, or so the tale goes.

There is an appealing parallel that Cheikh Sidi Diarra, the UN special adviser on Africa and high representative for least developed countries (LDCs) is willing to draw between this story and the reality of the world’s 48 LDCs (33 of which are in sub-Saharan Africa): “Despite the many ills these countries endure, the world needs to start looking at them more as lands of opportunities rather than a burden,” he says. Urging investors to consider nations associated with endemic poverty, disease and instability as a potential business magnet is a bold invitation. Yet the call is in line with the general tone of an international gathering that Mr. Diarra led in May in Istanbul, Turkey.

Since 1981 the once-a-decade UN conference has focused on the world’s most vulnerable countries (as defined by low per-capita incomes, low standards of living and high vulnerability to economic shocks). Its aim has been to mobilize support, including by encouraging developed nations to disburse more aid to LDCs. In the past, much time has been devoted to this issue. This time, however, talk about aid was not central.

That was in part a result of the budget constraints imposed on rich countries by a frustratingly slow economic recovery. A growing realization that aid alone cannot solve the fundamental problems LDCs face added to what some see as a welcome shift away from the usual debates.

Ultimately, the Istanbul Programme of Action renewed aid commitments made at the previous conference in Brussels, Belgium, 10 years ago. Donors pledged to devote between 0.15 and 0.2 per cent of their gross national incomes (GNIs) to aid to LDCs.

Civil society groups in Istanbul criticized that as too little. “Having caused massive costs in the LDCs through financial and food speculation, unjust trade rules, illegitimate loans with onerous conditionality and ecological damage, including climate change, the developed countries have not even committed to provide more aid to LDCs,” they said. This is a charge that Mr. Diarra disputed. Although not new, this promise of aid remains an important one, he argued, adding that if fulfilled, it would likely raise the amount of aid actually going to LDCs from its current annual level of $38 billion.

The emphasis in Istanbul was on trade, investment and productive capacities. Months before the meeting, trade issues were at the centre of some of the most heated debates among negotiators. African LDCs called for the adoption of a long-debated scheme that would allow all their exports to enter developed-country markets without any duties or quotas. Such preferential treatment was considered a step too far by most developed countries, however, even though LDCs’ share of world trade currently stands at only 1 per cent. The charms of the crossroads city of Istanbul did not change any minds. Instead, there was renewal of yet another decade-old commitment: tariff-free access to developed nations’ markets for 97 per cent of LDCs’ exports.

Unfortunately for African LDCs, this arrangement provides little benefit, as the 3 per cent of exports excluded from tariff-free treatment covers some of the countries’ most important export products, including agricultural commodities such as sugar, rice, meat and dairy products.

African LDCs’ quest for more foreign investment received a stronger boost. Measures designed to encourage developed countries’ corporations to invest in LDCs were adopted, with governments expected to encourage their companies to invest in LDCs by providing fiscal incentives and special lines of credit.

In recent years the 33 LDCs from Africa have benefited most from the growth in foreign direct investment (FDI) to LDCs, which rose from $4.1 billion to $32.4 billion between 2001 and 2008. African LDCs accounted for almost half of that total. Yet not only did FDI’s eight-year growth come to a brief halt following the global recession, it also appears that FDI is mostly oriented toward just a few sectors, such as oil and minerals. As a result, few jobs have been created and strong growth in oil-rich countries such as Angola and Equatorial Guinea has yet to translate into meaningful change in people’s lives. Such trends must change if foreign investment is to help reduce poverty, which affects over half the population in the continent’s LDCs. In order for it to do so, the Istanbul Programme of Action calls for economic diversification to reduce African LDCs’ dependence on the extractive sector.

One major point of agreement among delegates in Istanbul was the need to invest in productive sectors, including agriculture, industry and infrastructure. The Programme of Action refers to these as “development multipliers,” as improvement in each area will benefit others. In an era of rising food prices, the call for further investment in agriculture is of particular interest to Africa, as the continent spends around $33 billion every year on food imports.

As the rest of the world hears calls to look at the continent in a more positive way, are the continent’s LDCs ready to seize the opportunity? “There is no doubt many African LDCs are performing better. Sound economic policies are leading to strong improvements in various areas,” asserted Mr. Diarra. Based on their strengths and needs, more African LDCs should follow suit, he urges. If they do, the legendary foreign shoe sellers arriving in Africa may be left only with the impression that they came in far too late.

Africa Renewal www.un.org/africarenewal

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Botswana in the Mind of Ghana

Commentary/Ghana/Botswana

The August 17 meeting between Ghana’s President John Atta Mills and Botswana’s Ian Khama goes between the normal symbolic bilateral sweet talks. In contemporary African thinking, the core issue between Ghana and Botswana is how their respective democracies are harbingers of progress for the entire African democratic and development growth.

Lieutenant General Seretse Khama Ian Khama of Botswana (left) and President John Evans Atta Mills of Ghana (right)

The Botswana-Ghana meeting also comes at a time when development economists are changing their focus away from cross-country empirical studies towards case studies and “analytic narratives.” “Instead of trying to explain all of sub-Saharan Africa’s problems in one grand sweep, economists are engaging in more focused studies of particular nations.  Their hope is that by clearly understanding the particulars, broader conclusions can be drawn,” explains Scott A. Beaulier, an economist at Troy University, USA.

The two countries democracies are trendsetters in Africa but Botswana is the better of the two. While Ghana, a coastal nation, is loud-mouthed, Botswana, landlocked, is quiet and much more levelheaded.  Botswana is a top African example of how democracy, of the African extraction, can be used to solve most of Africa’s complicated development challenges.

Botswana’s development indicators top Sub-Sahara African countries. This is despite the fact that 84 percent of Botswana’s land mass is largely the uninhabitable Kalahari Desert and 80 percent of Botswana’s people live along the fertile eastern stripe of the state. Like Israel, the future is how Botswana transforms its inhabitable Kalahari Desert into habitable land for greater development.

Since independence in 1966 from Britain, Botswana, unlike Ghana which gain independence from Britain in 1957, has consistently held unfettered multi-party democratic elections, Ghana hasn’t, maked by military coups and executions. Like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Botswana was blessed with a fine founding President, Sir Seretse Khama, devoid of Nkrumah’s egomaniac tendencies. But unlike Ghana where Nkrumah later became a dictator and Ghana over the years expereinced some bad leaderships, Botswana is blessed with three decent leaders who succedded Seretse, the present one being Ian, the son of Seretse.

Unlike Ghana, Botswana, from 1966, driven by immense wisdom, has been able to integrate its traditional institions into its British colonial heritage in its development process. Seretse’s wife was a British woman, making Ian, like ex-Ghana President Jerry Rawlings, half-cast.. This makes Botswana indigenous institutions and values central part of its democracy, with its indigenous institutions as key accountability watcher. For instance, despite his immense political power, the traditional chief is regarded as an equal to Botswana people.

As Newsweek pointed out in 1990 in a piece entitled “Longing for Liberty,” “Botswana built a working democracy on an aboriginal tradition of local gatherings called kgotlas that resemble New England town meetings.” That explains not only Botswana’s democratic evolution but its dececentralization exercises that flow from its traditional values.

Botswana has an abundance of diamonds and successive governments have brilliantly husbanded it wisely for proper development of Botswanans. Ghana was formerly the world’s number one cocoa producer (it is now in number two), long-running political instabilities affected its development. Botswana doesn’t have such problems and coupled with its good governance, this has made Botswana Sub-Sahara Africa’s best developed and best run country. In the UN Human Development Index, Botswana ranks 98th and Ghana  130th out of 169 countries ranked in 2010.

In either Ghana or Botswana, world slumps in cocoa or diamonds, respectively, has affected Gross Domestic Product over the years. In Botswana, the average income has tripled in real terms in two decades, putting Botswana on a par with Mexico. While average income of a Ghanaian is 1.60 Ghanaian cedis (€0.74) a day, in Botswana it is 3.8 Botswana pula (€1.94) an hour for most full-time labor in the private sector.

At the same time as Ghana’s population is over 24 million and heavily heterogeneous and Botswana’s is 2 million and is almost homogenous, at issue aren’t size but the quality of governance. Size or no size, Botswana virtually escaped what most African countries have to confront – how to contain a far headier concoction of disparaging ethnic groups within boundaries unrealistically drawn by ignorant colonial map-makers. Ethnically, Botswana’s foremost test is how to deal with its anti-modern Bushmen minority. Ghana has tribalism problems, with some of its 56 ethnic groups as backward as the anti-modern Bushmen.

Unlike Ghana’s highly competitive democracy, Botswana leaders are yet to be challenged by a strong opposition; a single party has ruled since independence in 1966. That makes Botswana almost a one-party system. That is one reason why it was Ghana, with only 19 years of democratic practices, a recent African success story in democratic development, that made analysts to argue for US President Barack Obama to make his first visit to a sub-Saharan African country. Ghana’s 2008 presidential elections was neck-to-neck and the then governing National Patriotic Party (NPP) maturely accepted defeat by the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) at the polls.

However, in Ghana and Botswana democracy is fairly well established and independent institutions just evolving (Botswana has fairly  better developed democratic institutions than Ghana). In Botswana, the   Botswana People Party has been in power for 44 years. The opposition parties, especially the main Botswana Movement for Democracy, are widely considered to have no real chance of gaining power.

On the other hand, in Ghana, political power has been changing hands between the ruling National Democratic Congress and the main opposition National Patiotic Party. But in Botswana voters happily vote the ruling Botswana People’s Party into power for the past 44 years. Yet Botswanans do not feel disenfranchised. Despite this, over the years, Botswana has proved as an example of good governance in Africa. The lesson from Botswana isn’t how often political power changes hands but how political power is used for good governance and development.

Despite some democratic hurdles in both Botswana and Ghana, the African experiences points to democracy and political leadership, more of the Botswanan variety, where African values are deliberately and proportionally mixed with the Western liberal ones, as the best strategy to solve most of Africa’s development challenges.

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Nafissatou Diallo, Dominique Strauss-Kahn Accuser, to Meet Prosecutors

NEW YORK — The lawyer for the woman who accused former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault said Saturday that he believes prosecutors plan to dismiss some or all of the charges.

Attorney Kenneth Thompson told The New York Times that he got a letter from an assistant district attorney offering to meet with his client Monday, the day before Strauss-Kahn’s next scheduled court appearance.

The letter was written in terse tones and said the purpose was to discuss what would happen in court the next day. It said prosecutors would only meet the woman at 3 p.m.

“Should she not be available or should she fail to attend, I will assume that she does not wish to take advantage of this opportunity,” wrote the prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Artie McConnell.

“If they were not going to dismiss the charges,” he told the newspaper, “there would be no need to meet with her. They would just go to court the next day to say, `We’re going to proceed with the case.’ ”

Thompson sent an email to The Associated Press saying he was on a plane and couldn’t immediately discuss the issue.

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office declined to comment.

Strauss-Kahn was arrested during a May visit to New York City after a housekeeper at a Manhattan hotel told police he attacked her when she arrived to clean his suite. The woman, Nafissatou Diallo, told police that he forced her to perform oral sex and then left the hotel.

The arrest prompted Strauss-Kahn to resign from the International Monetary Fund, and disrupted his political career in France, where he was seen as a probable candidate for president.

But in July, prosecutors said publicly that Diallo had lied to them about her personal history, and about some critical details of the case. She also admitted lying to U.S. immigration officials about her life in Guinea, her native country, when she applied for political asylum in 2003. A law enforcement official also said prosecutors discovered that, a day after the alleged attack, Diallo had called a friend to talk about the incident, and that during that call she had mentioned Strauss-Kahn’s wealth.

The district attorney’s office then agreed to relax the conditions of Strauss-Kahn’s bail, allowing him to be freed from house arrest.

The Associated Press generally doesn’t name people who report being sexually assaulted unless they agree to be identified, as Diallo has done.

If you like this article, I’d recommend my book “If I Was Famous, I’d Have a Lot to Say”

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Famine in Somalia, by Ban Ki-moon, UN Sec Gen

Across the Horn of Africa, people are starving. A catastrophic combination of conflict, high food prices and drought has left more than 11 million people in desperate need. The United Nations has been sounding the alert for months. We have resisted using the “f-word” — famine — but on Wednesday we officially recognized the fast-evolving reality. There is famine in parts of Somalia. And it is spreading.

This is a wake-up call we cannot ignore. Everyday, I hear the most harrowing reports from our UN teams on the ground. Somali refugees, their cattle and goats dead from thirst, walking for weeks to find help in Kenya and Ethiopia. Orphans who arrive alone, their parents dead, terrified and malnourished, in a foreign land.

From within Somalia, we hear terrible stories of families who watched their children die, one by one. One woman recently arrived at a UN displacement camp 140 kilometres south of Mogadishu after a three-week trek. Halima Omar, from the region of Lower Shebelle, was once considered well off. Today, after three years of drought, she barely survives. Four of her six children are dead. “There is nothing in the world worse than watching your own child die in front of your eyes because you cannot feed him,” she said of her ordeal. “I am losing hope.”

Even for those who reach the camps, there is often no hope. Many are simply too weak after long journeys across the arid lands and die before they can be nursed back to strength. For people who need medical attention, there are often no medicines. Imagine the pain of those doctors, who must watch their patients perish for lack of resources.

As a human family, these stories shock us. We ask: how is this happening again? After all, the world has enough food. And yes, economic times are hard. Yet since time immemorial, amid even the worst austerity, the compassionate impulse to help our fellow human beings has never wavered.

That is why I reach out today — to focus global attention on this crisis, to sound the alarm and call on the world’s people to help Somalia in this moment of greatest need. To save the lives of the people at risk — the vast majority of them women and children — we need approximately $1.6 billion in aid. So far, international donors have given only half that amount. To turn the tide, to offer hope in the name of our common humanity, we must mobilize worldwide.

This means everyone. I appeal to all nations – both those who fund our work year-in and year-out, and those who do not traditionally give through the multinational system – to step up to the challenge. On July 25, in Rome, UN agencies gather to coordinate our emergency response and raise funds for immediate assistance.

Meanwhile, we must all ask ourselves, as individual citizens, how we can help. This might mean private donations, as in previous humanitarian emergencies in Indonesia after the tsunami or Haiti after the earthquake, or it could mean pushing elected representatives toward a more robust response. Even in the best of circumstances, this may not be enough. There is a real danger we can not meet all the needs.

The situation is particularly difficult in Somalia. There, ongoing conflict complicates any relief effort. More broadly, sharply rising food prices have stretched the budgets of international agencies and NGOs. Operating conditions are complicated by the fact that the transitional national government of Somalia controls only a portion of the capital city, Mogadishu. We are working on an agreement with the forces of Al Shabaab, an Islamist militia group, to grant access to areas of the country that they control. Even so, serious security concerns remain.

We must also recognise that Kenya and Ethiopia, which have generously kept their borders open, face enormous challenges of their own. The largest refugee camp in the world, Dadaab, is already dangerously over-crowded with some 380,000 refugees. Many thousands more are waiting to be registered. In neighbouring Ethiopia, 2,000 people a day are arriving at the Dolo refugee camp – also struggling to keep pace. This compounds a food crisis faced by almost 7 million Kenyans and Ethiopians at home. In Djibouti and Eritrea, tens of thousands of people are also in need — and potentially many more.

Even as we respond to this immediate crisis, we need to find ways to deal with underlying causes. Today’s drought may be the worst in decades. But with the effects of climate change being increasingly felt throughout the world, it will surely not be the last. This means practical measures: drought-resistant seeds, irrigation, rural infrastructure, livestock programmes.

These projects can work. Over the last ten years, they have helped boost agricultural production in Ethiopia by eight percent a year. We have also seen improvements in our early warning systems. We knew this drought was coming and began issuing warnings last November. Looking ahead, we must ensure those warnings are heard in time.

Above all, we need peace. As long as there is conflict in Somalia, we cannot effectively fight famine. More and more children will go hungry; more and more people will needlessly die. And this cycle of insecurity is growing dangerously wide.

In Somalia, Halima Omar told us: “Maybe this is our fate — or maybe a miracle will happen and we will be saved from this nightmare.”

I cannot accept this as her fate. Together, we must rescue her and her countrymen and all their children from a truly terrible nightmare.

—The writer is Secretary-General of the United Nations

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