NEVIS Review 15, Section II, Ref# 15.2

NEVIS Review 15
Section II
Ref# 15.2
April 22, 2013
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Adjustments, Multinational plunder and Coup d’états in Africa:
Bearings on fledgling democratic experiments
(Summary of a published article )
By Costantinos BT Costantinos, PhD

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

More than a hundred and ten successful coup d’états and counter coups have taken been recorded in Africa since the independence efforts in the 60s. On March 21, 2012, young military officers protesting the government’s handling of a Tuareg-led rebellion staged a coup against Mali’s President; while Structural Adjustments and rising ethnic tensions, in addition to the lack of political will that has contributed to the bourgeoning illegal exploitation of natural resources have characterised the coup d’états that haunt much of Africa. Historically, the illegal exploitation of natural resources has played a key role in triggering and financing conflict in many parts of the Great Lakes Region. This article, published by the author with the Pan African lawyers Union (PALU), the research delves into the political transition process in Africa since independence, military coups that haunted the continent and presents the analytical limitations in current perspectives of the transition to sustainable democracy and development in Africa; with the distinction between concepts and processes of political openness and political participation. Using qualitative methods, it draws conceptual distinction between political openness and democracy and the political agencies and ideologies at play; distinguishing between strategic and processual dimensions of the political change. The nuclear thesis of the paper bases its question on is the endowment of institutions in civil society and state conducive to democratic transition? (Costantinos, BT., 1996:342-355)
Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) and rising ethnic tensions characterised the eighties in much of Africa. These tendencies interact causally. Africa's growing debt burden and the nature of the SAPs have generated authoritarian responses to popular anger. The linkage between SAP and rising ethnic tensions is manifested in the distribution of power, wealth and ethnicity, especially under conditions of increasing scarcity, needs to be reconsidered. There are a number of reasons why ethnic and regional tensions are exacerbated by debts, economic crisis and SAPs; a core contention is that political tensions are rising as part of the general resistance against both SAP, because of its pauperising impact, and against the state, which is seen coercive and negligent of its basic welfare responsibilities.
On the arrearage side, within a life span of something like two millennia, the African state has exhibited an enhanced degree of coercive power, resulting in a pervasive military ethos leading to the emergence of self-labelled “Developmental” and “Socialist” military oligarchies through a long and painful process of ideological schooling. A major obstacle to efforts to install and consolidate democratic system in Africa is the all powerful, highly centralised and hierarchical bureaucratic structure; further exacerbated by economic adjustment programme and coups and counter coups, which antedated the democratisation process by almost a decade. The organisational imperative of the massive bureaucratic machine is to command and control and is preoccupied with its own survival and enrichment. It is unlikely that the powerful bureaucracy will abandon its control of the state apparatus to elected leaders or respect the institutional restraints of democratic rule without struggle. The lack of political culture also imposes serious threats to democratic development in the continent. Practices such as free elections, the formatting of political parties, free and open discourse on public issues are all foreign concepts that need to be installed in the minds of the majority of the populace. While a host of other African countries set themselves to attain the institutions and practices that have been the basic ingredients of the Western liberal democratic model; ethnicity have come to be espoused as principal sources of political partisanship.
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ANALYTICAL DIMENSIONS OF COUP D’ÉTATS IN AFRICA

Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda and Zanzibar have experienced multiple coups and counter coups.( Wrong, Michela, 2001, Ibhawoh, B., 2002, HRW, 2010, Omnia El Shakry, 2012 & J. Bayo Adekanye, 2008)
Nonetheless, the discussion and analyses of transition to democracy in Africa generally are marked by several limitations. The first set of limitations relate to a tendency to narrow democratic thought and practice to the terms and categories of immediate, not very well considered, political and social action, a naive realism, as it were. Secondly, the limitations arise from inattention to problems of articulation or production of democratic systems and process within African politics rather than simply as formal or abstract possibilities. Thirdly, it is the ambiguity as to whether civil society is the agent or object of democratic change and concerning the role of the state. Finally, it is a nearly exclusive concern in certain institutional perspectives on democratisation in Africa with generic attributes and characteristics of political organisations and consequent neglect of analysis in terms of specific strategies and performances of organisations in processes of transition. In addition, we have the inadequate treatment of the role of international agencies and the relations between global and indigenous aspects or dimensions of democratisation in Africa. Let us look at each of these analytical limitations more closely. (Costantinos, BT., 1996:341)
Intervention by international organisations disrupts transitions to the extent that it is perceived as partisan. Multinational, multilateral, bilateral and non-governmental external agencies have, in recent years, taken a large number of initiatives aimed directly or indirectly at helping Africa ‘democratise’ its way out of economic chaos and political instability. In doing so, they rely on a wide variety of programmes, institutional mechanisms and policies. Indeed, growing external involvement in African projects of democratisation and economic recovery has resulted in increasingly challenging problems of conceptualising the role and function of international agencies that seem in marked contrast to the limited effort exerted to put the interventions in coherent theoretical or strategic perspective. Insofar as these activities are not understood and engaged in, their democratic (and developmental) impact may diminish with their proliferation. This can mean little more than a weakly coordinated multiplication of programmes and projects which have immediately recognisable or measurable effects in limited areas, but which seem to suspend rather than serve their ultimate goals.
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CREDIBLE ALTERNATIVE TO ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENTS 

There have been a variety of alternatives that address both the economic model upon which adjustments are based, and the non-democratic and excessively harsh method by which they were imposed. In 1989, The UN ECA provided a comprehensive and credible alternative. The African Alternative Framework called for ‘adjustment with transformation’ which called for a reduction in the continent's reliance on external trade and financing, the promotion of food self-sufficiency and greater popular participation in economic planning and decision-making.
“Any serious attempt at promoting an agenda of good governance and popular participation in government must start with a more coherent human rights agenda. To begin with, the focus of adjustment reforms must shift from state macroeconomics to the primary social well-being of the individual. Human beings, with all the rights and freedoms that attach to them, should constitute the focus of all economic reforms and development assistance. Policies that actively infringe human rights, no matter the transient economic attractions they hold, are invalid and counterproductive. Economic reforms, if they are to achieve any real improvement in the living conditions of people, must be founded on a specific and clearly defined framework of rights and freedoms which states and IFIs should have a legal and moral obligation to respect. Only by working within coherent human rights agenda can adjusting states ensure the legitimacy of adjustment reforms and the broader participation of social groups in their formulation and implementation.” (Ibid)
Profound commitment is needed to promote regional strategies for the diversification and enhancement of sources of income, competitiveness of productive sectors, rational management of land resources, sustained and sound management of vital regional natural and environmental resources such as aquatic ecosystems, mineral deposits and forests of the Congo Basin, as well as sustainable human settlements. These commitments need reflect the political determination the strategic vision necessary for the articulation of a project aimed at the realisation of the objective of the establishment of an effective regional mechanism for the certification of natural resources. In order to be successful, any attempt to develop a certification scheme must take cognisance of emerging global trends in the conservation, development and management of such resources.
These include a carefully managed devolution of administrative responsibilities to sub-national entities that do not undermine the Certification Scheme and acceptance and use of participatory approaches that highlight the critical need to ensure that all stakeholders recognise and understand the role that certification schemes could play in protecting their resources and contributing towards their quality of life. No certification scheme can realistically hope to be effective unless the private sector recognises the benefits inherent in participation and compliance and establishes effective mechanisms to guarantee the commitment and full participation of producers and traders alike in the natural resources concerned. Effective certification has the potential to improve value addition and improve the earnings and tax revenues from the natural resources that are traded within and between borders.

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DEMOCRATIC RULES AND INSTITUTIONS 

Democratic Development is a process of rule making in which citizens obtain opportunities for political contestation and political participation. Political contestation refers to open rivalry and competition among diverse political interests. Political participation refers to the entitlement of citizens, considered as political equals, to be involved in choosing governmental leaders and policies. Democracy is a regime in which the authority to exercise power derives from the will of the people. Insofar as existing perspectives on political reform in Africa neglect to pose the problem of articulation of democracy as a relatively autonomous mode of analysis (in which democracy projects impose ideology upon our polities, governments and societies from the outside), democratisation would consist of a set of activities in which universal, mainly Western, concepts and standards of governance are neatly "applied to", as distinct from produced or re-produced in African contexts and conditions. Even at the level of application alone, it is largely overlooked that international models may enter Government and societies in Africa through a proliferation of programmes and mechanisms that hinder the growth of open and effective transition process thus retarding the development of indigenous democratic-system experience and capacity.
Whether democracy in Africa is defined in terms of individual freedom or collective rights, government policy or citizen action, private value or public norm, the upshot of the relative inattention to problems of articulation of open democratic systems and processes in itself makes democracy at once the most concrete of idea systems. Within current projects of political reform, democracy is either conventionalised or sterilised on terrain of theory and often vacuously formalised on the ground of practice. It enters African politics and society in relatively abstract and plain form, yet is expected to land itself to immediate and vital African polity's socio-political experience. It suggests itself, seems within reach only to elude, and appears readily practicable only to resist realisation.
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REFERENCES AND ENDNOTES
Costantinos, BT., 1996, transition to democracy in Africa: a cross national study. Arusha: GCA/ALF
HRW, 2010, Mali: Coup Leaders Must Respect Rights, http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/03/22/mali-coup-leaders-must-respect-rights, , retrieved Mar 22, 2012
Ibhawoh, B., 2002, Structural Adjustment, Authoritarianism and Human Rights in Africa, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and Middle East, Vol. XIX No. 1, http://cssaame.com/issues/19_1/12ibhawoh.pdf, retrieved Mar 22, 2012
J. Bayo Adekanye, 2008. Structural Adjustment, Democratization and Rising Ethnic Tensions in Africa, Article first published online: 22 OCT 2008, DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7660.1995.tb00556.x, © Institute of Social Studies, Development and Change, Vol 26, Issue 2, pp 355–374, April 1995, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-7660.1995.tb00556.x/abstract, retrieved March 22, 2012
Omnia El Shakry, 2012. Egypt's Three Revolutions: The Force of History behind this Popular Uprising, retrieved from http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/569/egypts-three-revolutions_the-force-of-history-behi,
Wrong, Michela, 2001, In The Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo. HarperCollins, pp.352
UNECA, 1989. Alternative Framework for Structural Adjustments , Addi s Ababa:UNECA
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[Ed’s Note: Costantinos (PhD) is an economist by training and currently teaches Comparative Public Policy at the School of Graduate Studies at the AAU. He can be reached at costy@costantinos.net.] 
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NEVIS Review 15, Section I, Ref# 15.1

NEVIS Review 15
Section I
Ref# 15.1
April 22, 2013
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African political culture and democracy: Part VI
Amoral Familism and Predatory Rule
By Hiwot Wendimagegn

Two of the underlining principles behind amoral familism are unquestioned loyalty and inter-group mistrust. Since such loyalty is accorded whether it is deserved or not, it is usually indicative of reverence or group members who expect certain advantages in return for loyalty. As a result, the devout affiliates tend to be wary or antagonistic to out-group members. In this vein, the values and attitudes surrounding Africa’s predatory rule are ideal examples for a society manifesting amoral familism. The blind loyalty and inter-group mistrust that characterizes it has devastated the prospects for mutual trust and mutual well being.
For the most part, politics in Africa is anything but rational. It is so personalized around the person of the president. Schatzberg went as far as arguing power is not simply personalized but also paternalized: Government stands in the same relationship to its citizens in a way a father does to his children (Schatzberg, 2001:1). As opposed to its colonial counterpart, the post colonial polity demands not only obedience but also “affection”. Mere submission does not suffice; active participation in rituals of loyalty (support marches, assemblies to applaud touring dignitaries, purchase of party cards, display of the presidential portrait, participation in plebiscitary elections) is often mandatory (Young, 2004:34). These are all expressions of the paranoia of ruling elites and the extremities they go through to maintain the semblance of democracy.
The consequential centralization of power that results from ruling a state that is the source of affluence has affected not only the elites of Africa but the behavior of prospective elites and the rest of society as well. It has brought about insurgencies, ethnic based groupings a myriad of de jure political parties, whose aim is to rise to power by all means (Bayart, 2009, Bayart et al., 2009). These elites in turn try to manipulate and co-opt ordinary people into assisting them or voting for them via promising or delivering material incentives; this has intensified the politics of exclusion as well as the politics of plunder.
In brief, in tropical Africa as elsewhere it has been assumed that political parties must play a key role in democratic consolidation. Accordingly, since the political transitions of the early 1990’s multiparty politics with more or less regular elections have become the norm in sub-Saharan Africa. Even though, regular competitive multi party elections have earned most African nations the name “electoral democracies”, the day to day practices of the state are marked by abuse. Elaborately,
“Political freedoms and civil rights may be formally recognized but are imperfectly observed in practice, particularly in between electoral exercises when they are most likely to be flouted. Human rights abuses are not uncommon, even if the worst abuses are rarer than in the authoritarian past. A nominally free press is harassed in myriad ways and the government retains a radio monopoly. Certain groups, notably key members of the executive branch and the military, may in effect be above the law. The judicially is officially independent but it is poorly trained, overworked and easily compromised” (Stokke et al. 2001:13).

In light of these bewilderments, the discussions henceforth will show how amoral familism as manifested in the haphazard nature of party politics and clientelism elucidates the intolerance and arbitrariness surrounding the personalized politics of predatory rule.
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Haphazard Party Politics

Just like Africa lacks democracy at the national level so do its incumbent political parties at the internal level. Ruling political parties in Africa operate much like private clubs with no effective public regulation of their internal governance and actions (Merideth, 2005: 218-225, Premph, 2008, 115-120). Loyalty to one’s party and its leadership is deemed obligatory and usually trumps all other considerations (ibid, Vicky and Svasand, 2002). Summary expulsion or suspension of dissenters is fairly routine and parties exert tight top-down control, especially over their legislators. In the case of majority ruling parties, “this hierarchical and oligarchic control is usually exercised for the president’s benefit if not at his behest” (Prempeh, 2008:117). Party candidates almost never commit to or discuss specific policies; in fact, most African parties lack internal organization or capacity even to generate or evaluate policy recommendations (Mohammed (ed), 2003, Stokke et al. 2001:13). “What unites and occasionally divides president and party in Africa then is not commitment to a common programmatic agenda but the desire to gain and maintain control of state resources” (Prempeh, 2008:117).
On the other hand, opposition political parties established in Africa have been marred by discord, lack of interest to collude in achieving common objectives or alliances being short lived (Mohammed (ed), 2003). Idealistic or programmatic parties are hard to find in Africa’s multiparty parliaments. In fact, beyond the platitudes of party manifestos, there is little programmatic difference among rival parties in most African political systems (van de Walle, 2003:304). “All offer vague campaign promises of better governance and better times to come while prophesying a dismal future should the people make the “mistake” of choosing the other party” (Prempeh, 2008:115). Most parties emerge largely during or immediately before the transition to compete for power All of which confirms the fact that parties exist to capture power for its own sake rather than for the noble cause of influencing policy.
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Clientelism

The centrality of clientelism within multi-party politics across Africa is difficult to deny. African political parties predominantly rely on clientelism or at the least the promise of such assistance as the basis for mobilizing political support (Lynch and Crawford, 2011:288, Stokke et al., 2001:43-56, Vicente and Wantchekon, 2009). Clientelism in Africa broadly refers to political authority which is based on the giving and granting of favors “in an endless series of dyadic exchanges that go from the village level to the highest reaches of the central state” (van de Walle, 2001:51). Patron-client relations are primarily about providing material resources in exchange for political as well as personal loyalty; such practices as attending to individuals’ school fees, electricity and water bills, funeral and weeding expenses; or distributing cutlasses and other tools for agriculture, clearly manifest legitimacy is bought for its inability to be earned (Lindberg, 2003:123-4, Lindberg and Morrison, 2008:101).
Clientelism often interpreted as vote buying connotes: voters expect to gain in material terms for their vote. In his insightful book “Brokering Democracy in Africa: The Rise of Clientelist Democracy in Senegal” Linda Beck daringly claims African democracy should be named “clientelist democracy” as it is infused with clientelist relationships that serve as the basis for Political mobilization and accountability (Beck, 2008:4). Instead of popular participation for the sake of drafting and implementing public policies, clientelism has become the means by which peasant or migrant or otherwise excluded communalities are integrated into electoral political competition (Szeftel, 2000:430).
Clientelism does reinforce loyalties to kith and kin. The redistribution that is achieved or at least perceived to be achieved by such practices “serves to blunt class consciousness; “even when the exchange is largely symbolic, it links patron and client as a result, societies with pervasive clientelism are marked by the low salience of social class identities, despite their often glaring social inequalities” (Clapham, 1982:1-36). This certainty helps to explain the absence of programmatic political parties. Even more so, The difficulties of opposition parties to gain a sizeable share of the vote in some countries “ (…)are certainly compatible with a claim of voting instrumentality since they suggest that voters believe that voting for a loser will not be rewarded with access to state resources” (van de Walle, 2003:312).
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Concluding Remarks

The very fact that African elite political cultures are marred by the centralization of power and marginalization of opposition defines democracy in negative as opposed to positive terms. At the very start, African leaders chose to take over the colonial system instead of transforming it. As hitherto outlined, obsessed with the perks of state power and “besieged by the hostile forces unleashed by their repression, they became totally absorbed in survival and relegated everything else including development to a very low priority” (Ake, 1991:32). Thus, politics began and ended with accruing state power for personal gains. Albeit the combination of term limits and regular elections has displaced the coup d’état as the primary mode of regime change and leadership succession in contemporary Africa, politics still continues to be as haphazard as it was before. Political elites started buying off loyalty and punishing dissent making them neopatrimonial autocrats under the guises of legality.
Simply put, “personal politics is not public politics: it is not a sociological activity” (Jackson and Rosberg, 1984:424). When a nation is run by a group of elites that use personal whims instead of rationality and firmly established laws and demand unquestioned loyalty while marginalizing those who fail to comply, let alone democracy, mutual existence becomes impossible. Consequently, as manifested through the survival values and amoral familism surrounding predatory rule, democracy is largely a strategy for power not a vehicle for popular empowerment (Ake, 1993:240).
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[Ed’s note: The article above is the continuation (sixth part) of the series on "African Political culture and democracy" which Hiwot exclusively writes to NEVIS Review. The fifth part appeared on April 8, 2013 in NEVIS Review No 14 section II, Ref# 14.2.
Hiwot Wendimagegn has a Masters in International Relations at Addis Ababa University, and earned her BA degree in Political Science and minored in Public Administration again at AAU. She has worked as a lecturer, and currently works as a private consultant and event organizer. We would like to thank Hiwot for her regular, well-thought out and well-researched articles, in addition to her constant devotion and unreserved effort as an editor in NEVIS]

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NEVIS Review No 14 , Section II, Ref # 14.2

NEVIS Review No 14 Section II Ref # 14.2 April 8, 2013 --------------------------------- African political culture and democracy: Part IV The link between the political culture of predatory rule and Africa’s failing democracy By Hiwot Wendimagegn ------------------------ Unto now, the general African political setting vis-à-vis predatory rule and all the values and attitudes that sustain it have been outlined. It is now time to conclude the discussion by contrasting the African behavioral patterns with the political culture of democracy In line with the two concepts (survival and self expression values and amoral familism/negative social capital) introduced in the conceptual framework section of the series. ------------------- Survival Values and Predatory Rule As per previous discussions, democracy needs a set of values to flourish and to pertain. If one tries to implant it in a society characterized by materialist values that gives physical and economical survival precedence, it will not be able to thrive. Instead, it needs self expression values, manifested through attitudinal traits like participation, tolerance of diversity and life satisfaction. Contemporary Africa remains a far cry from such attitudinal values. It is still predominantly pre - capitalist and pre -industrial, primordial loyalties and pre-capitalist social structures remain strong (Ake, 1993:243). Moreover, the majority of Africans continue to languish in extreme poverty and barely make it bellow subsistence level. A Reuters 2008 report has revealed, while most of the developing world has managed to reduce poverty, the rate in sub- Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest region, has not changed in nearly 25 years. According to data collected using the new $1.25 a day poverty line, half of the people in sub- Saharan Africa were living below the poverty line in 2005, the same as in 1981. That means about 380 million people lived under the poverty line in 2005, compared with 200 million in 1981. Moreover, According to UNDP’s latest and more comprehensive, Multidimensional Poverty Index (2011), most nations of sub-Saharan Africa fall under the final (Low Human Development) category of the human development rank (the other categories include: Very High Human Development, High Human Development and Medium Human Development).In such conditions, instead of “life satisfaction” and “the pursuit of happiness”, the value driving daily existence becomes “survival of the fittest”. Adding fuel to the fire, Africa is bedeviled by the misfortune that is predatory rule. On many occasions, the centralization of power and the curtailment of personal liberties have been justified as a means of achieving rapid development as democracy will not feed the hungry, heal the sick and shelter the homeless (Ake, 1991:37). However, African leaders too busy feeding and sheltering themselves neither brought development nor democracy. “What passed for development was usually a crudely fabricated plan that an embattled and distracted leadership put together for the sake of appearances, often with an eye to luring prospective donors” (Ake,1991: 35).The fixation with accruing personal wealth as opposed to perusing socially beneficial policies killed the hope for tolerance and popular participation. New regimes even when they have been democratically elected, and new forms of political mobilization such as militias and armed groups, consistently hastened to constitute vectors of criminalization (Bayart et al., 1999:18). As a result: “The implication of military or paramilitary organizations in the wholesale looting of cities, in the theft of humanitarian aid and in trafficking in drugs diamonds or other natural resources has been apparent in Liberia, Sierra Leone , Somalia, Burundi, Rwanda. It has been the pattern for longer period in Chad, Angola and Mozambique to the point where several conflicts south of the Sahara can be better understood as stemming from the economic logic of predation rather than any political, ethnic or regional calculus (ibid).” For this reason, when one assesses the elite strand of predatory rule, it is easy to detect post- independence Africa government-opposition relations is characterized by securitization of opposition/ politics of exclusion, by the government and resorting to rebellion/ protest, by the opposition (Mohammed (ed), 2003). Samuel Huntington in his book “The Third Wave : Democratization in the Late 20th Century” argues: A system is undemocratic to the extent that no opposition is permitted in elections or that the opposition is curbed or harassed in what it can do or that opposition news papers are censored or closed down or that voters are manipulated or miscounted. Those in power are so keen on preserving it that any sort of “risk”/ “opposition”, is viewed as a security issue (the militia spread around most cities of African nations has a very strong connotation that dissent is an offense punishable by death.). In expressing the deep-rootedness of this political mania Lary Diamond wrote: “[amidst] the myriad of ways in which leaders can and often do manipulate and subvert the electoral process, a particularly worrying development is the readiness and ease with which political elites revert to strategies of political violence including the sponsorship of informal repression or covert violations by third parties and widespread use of informal disenfranchisement ranging from ethnic cleansing to the introduction of universal but discriminatory registration methods identification requirements of universal but discriminatory registration methods identification requirements and voting procedures which disenfranchises actual or likely opposition candidate and supporters (Cited in Lynch and Crawford, 2011: 281-2).” On the other hand, the opposition parties are often on the ready to overlook “democratic procedures” and go back to the world they know so well, that of rebellion and protest. For example, between 1990 and 2001, there were 50 attempted coups in sub-Saharan Africa of which 13 were successful which represents a much lower rate of success in comparison to earlier years, but no significant reduction in the African military’s propensity to launch coup attempts .The truth in all these mishaps is, for Africans to engage in politics, to distribute their meager resources and make common decisions by a process of debate and communal decisions, “they must respect one another’s opinion and interests. If one group cannot accept government by another or cannot accept a decision which is not in its own favor [let alone democracy], politics becomes impossible” (Elcok, 1976:74). Apparently, wrapped up with their short term material interests and lack of hindsight, African elites have made democracy impracticable. As outlined in the previous discussions, the popular strand of the political culture of predatory rule has actually helped breed predatory elitism through clientelism, patronage and nepotism; thus, the classic case of nations eating away themselves. What can be deduced from all these assertions is that, the rat race for material resources in particular and wealth in general has reduced democracy to a mere shenanigan and a means to an end. Moreover, the utter disregard for the common good which is the cornerstone of survival values, kills off tolerance, trust and mutually beneficial existence. ------------ [Ed’s note:The article above is the continuation (fifth part) of the series on "African Political culture and democracy" which Hiwot exclusively wrote to NEVIS. The fourth part appeared on NEVIS Review No 11,February 25, 2013, Section III (Ref # 11.3)] -----------------------------//---------------------------

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NEVIS Review No 14, Section I, Ref # 14.1

NEVIS Review No 14
Section I
Ref # 14.1
April 8, 2013
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A Fair Share from the ‘Development Pie’: Disability in the Ethiopian PRSP Process

By Dagnachew Bogale Wakene
(Dagnachew B. Wakene,LL.B., M.Phil)

“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”

(Eleanor Roosevelt: Remark at a presentation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – UDHR - at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. New York, March 27, 1958).
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While a plethora of local and international development pundits have written, and continue to write, extensively on Ethiopia’s ongoing ‘economic boom’, little has been said about if and how this acclaimed development enterprise aims to accommodate an often ostracized, cross-sectoral socio-economic theme, viz disability. This article [1] provides an analytical glimpse at the extent of disability inclusion in the Ethiopian development agenda vis-à-vis the role and impact thereon of the country’s disability movement [2], with a particular emphasis on Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs).
The paper offers disability stakeholders in Ethiopia, as well as those in other countries with similar socio-economic stature to that of Ethiopia, timely evidence that would encourage further research undertakings and inform relevant policy interventions.
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[1] The article presented herein is based on the author’s graduate research conducted between January to December, 2011 (and updated in August, 2012) within the auspices of Stellenbosch University, South Africa. The full and original version of the research can be retrieved at www.scholar.sun.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10019.1/.../wakene_role_2011.pdf
[2] The term ‘movement’ is generally described as ‘the organization or gathering of people around a certain issue or set of issues; or around a set of shared concerns and common interest’ (Campbell and Oliver, 1996). As such, for purposes of this article, a ‘disability movement’, can be said to encompass all organizations, individuals and/or groups, the primary agenda of whom pertains to promoting the rights of

[Ed’s note: We thank Dagnchew for talking the initiative to share us his brilliantly
written article.The link to the full article of Dagnachew can also be found on page 15 of the document on the following link:
http://www.zbdw.de/projekt01/media/pdf/2012_3_BiE.pdf

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