Ultimately, success depends on the political will of African leaders who need to be enforcing accountability at all stages of using public resources.
Last month, the continent endorsed a new financing model for the African Union’s security priorities, which is expected to reduce the body’s dependence on outside sources. Finally, the continent appears to be seizing its own destiny and moving the dream of an “African Renaissance” from rhetoric to reality.
The groundbreaking decision to institute a levy of 0.2 per cent on eligible imports provides, for the first time, a sustainable and predictable funding mechanism for Africa’s security priorities.
African leaders are hopeful that the new levy, which follows an earlier decision made last year to finance 25 per cent of the cost of AU peace support operations, has the potential of generating $1.2 billion from the continent’s resources. The amount is far more than the 2016 African Union Commission budget of $447 million, or even the $782 million for the 2017 budget.
Additionally, each of Africa’s five regions is expected to contribute $65 million per year from the import levy for the AU Peace Fund (expected to increase to $80 million per region by 2020), totalling $325 million and $400 million in 2017 and 2020, respectively.)
This historic development takes place as experts debate the urgent need for effective, efficient and transparent use of Africa’s security resources to ensure that the continent’s newly discovered oil and gas benefits its people.
This was the focus of a dialogue on “Managing Security Resources in Africa,” involving intellectuals, policy practitioners and senior military officers and organised jointly by the East African Community Secretariat and the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies of the American National Defence University on August 1-5, in Arusha.
The boldness of Africa’s new financing model is a reflection of a fresh optimism, fuelled by its remarkable economic performance over the past two decades. The continent has defied the trend that has bedevilled global economies. Its growth over the past decades has averaged over 5 per cent, and seven of the 10 fastest growing countries in the world today are in Africa.
Indeed, Africa’s problem is not the lack of resources: The continent is commodity-rich with 12 per cent of the world’s oil reserve; 40 per cent of its gold; and 80 per cent to 90 per cent of its strategic minerals like chromium and platinum. In particular, East Africa is the new frontier of an unprecedented oil boom, likely to generate huge national wealth never witnessed before.
It is estimated that roughly nine billion new barrels of recoverable oil and gas could be found in the region within the next decade — amounting to 3.5 billion barrels in Uganda and up to three billion each in Kenya and Tanzania, and at least half a billion in Ethiopia. At current prices, it is estimated that the new sources of oil and gas could inject a colossal $3 trillion into the economies of some of Africa’s poorest and least developed nations.
The big question is whether Africa will develop efficient and effective resource governance mechanisms to allocate and use its prosperity accountably and transparently to pull the mass of the continent’s people out of poverty. This is pivotal to avoiding the proverbial resource curse and realising Africa’s Agenda 2063 of stable growth and prosperity, and turning the continent’s youth bulge from a potential tragedy into a windfall.
Progress made
Many African countries have embraced the vision of managing public resources with integrity, transparency and accountability. They consider efficient and effective service delivery as a prerequisite for sustainable economic growth and development.
In the decades following the Cold War, countries have invested heavily in establishing institutions, policies, systems, rules and procedures for the transparent management of public resources. They have put mechanisms in place to check misspending, wastage and corruption. From South Africa to Kenya to Tanzania, African countries are adopting new constitutions that bestow oversight of the security sector on country/state and national parliaments.
At the regional level, the East African Legislative Assembly in Arusha and the Pan-African Parliament in Pretoria, South Africa are setting the norms to govern the effective and transparent use of resources in the security sector. But strengthening oversight institutions and eliminating misspending, misallocation and embezzlement remain a work in progress.
Setbacks
Africa confronts challenges in managing security resources at five levels. Foremost is a public culture that tolerates and emboldens corrupt practices. The culture of public intolerance of corruption that saw ordinary citizens apprehend corrupt police officers to face the law immediately after Mwai Kibaki’s National Rainbow Coalition ascended to power in 2002 has, sadly, given way to a cavalier attitude to graft.
Across Africa, get-rich-quick individuals have become heroes irrespective of how they made their wealth while calls on public officers to declare their wealth go unheeded.
Second, despite the progress made in establishing mechanisms for accountability, Africa still has a significant transparency deficit. In Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country and biggest oil producer, at least $400 billion of oil revenue was stolen or misspent between 1960 and 2012.
According to estimates by former World Bank vice-president Oby Ezekwesili, this amounted to 12 times the country’s annual budget for 2011. The cost of misbehaviour, rule-breaking and outright corruption should be made so high that public officers choose to play by the rules.
Third, many African countries face accountability challenges because of weak legislatures that lack independence. Hence, national parliaments are unable to exercise oversight over the executive and largely depend on it for their human and material resources and funding.
Fourth, despite technological progress, Africa still faces serious technical and managerial capacity shortfalls, which are seldom addressed by reform choices.
Fifth are inappropriate governance reform choices that are out of tune with country contexts, imposed by donors and their consultants.
On top of these governance deficits, many African countries face a wage bill dilemma: In 2014, Kenya, whose wage bill stood at 53 per cent of the national budget — way above the recommended 34 per cent — found that it needed a frank public dialogue on the issue to get the public approval to downsize the public service, slash salaries and tame corruption in order to meet its development priorities.
Success stories
However, it is not all doom and gloom. Africa has notable success stories on measures taken to institute a culture of transparency in the management of security resources. Botswana is a showpiece of how to do things right, enabling it to register relatively stable and transparent growth for decades.
Many East African countries now run more open budgeting processes, widely hailed as a first crucial step towards democratising by giving citizens a say in policy formulation and resource allocation. Countries are making efforts to ensure budget transparency, enabling ease of access to information about government revenues, allocations and expenditures to the general public. This has enabled governments to get vital feedback on the financing of their priorities, policies and programmes.
Moreover, the creation of independent police oversight authorities in Kenya and South Africa has provided a unique tool of strengthening accountability in the security sector. Additionally, increased capacity of civil society as well as free media have enabled these non-state actors to hold public sector actors into account and to bring the vices of corruption to public attention, in many cases leading to investigations and prosecutions. The corruption case that recently engulfed the National Youth Service in Kenya is a case in point.
However, media-led and civil society-based anti-corruption campaign have their downside. In many countries, the anti-graft processes have become so intensely politicised in the context of elite power tussles that they have lost their credibility as moral crusades.
Finally, many eastern Africa countries have embraced the use of technology to ensure transparency and effectiveness in the delivery of public good. A case in point is the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) in Kenya. It is an automated system that has enhanced efficiency in planning budgeting, procurement, expenditure management and reporting in the national and county governments. However, while technological innovations have reduced contacts between the officers providing services and the public, experience has shown that they are not wholly immune to manipulation.
Studies have suggested several priorities for countries to move towards effective and efficient management of public resources, including in the security sector.
Ultimately, success in entrenching approved norms, rules and procedures depends on the political will of African leaders who need to be enforcing accountability at all stages of using public resources. This is the only way Africa can turn its wealth from a curse to a boon.
Prof Peter Kagwanja is the chief executive of the Africa Policy Institute. This article is based on remarks made at a recent workshop in Arusha on managing Africa’s security resources.