Of all the institutions that the African continent and its energetic leadership have established to facilitate its reform efforts to achieve continental transformation and empowerment for Africans at the turn of the 21st century, the African Development Bank stands a world apart in terms of its vision, institutional resilience, partnerships, and courage to pursue significant innovations and policy that have continued to impact Africa’s development dynamics.
Since its establishment in 1964, and for over five decades till date, the AfDB has consistently been in the forefront of assessing, articulating and delivering development insights and paradigms on the African continent.
A very clearly crafted mission statement announces that the objective of the AfDB is “to spur sustainable economic development and social progress in its regional member countries, thus contributing to poverty reduction.” And to be able to achieve this, the AfDB recognises the dynamic power of institutional innovation and collaborations. It has therefore constituted itself into a critical core of dynamic partnership with other institutional powerhouse on the continent, from the African Capacity Building Foundation to the African Export-Import Bank. The AfDB is one initiatives-rich institution that is constantly reflecting on multiple levels of development possibilities for Africa.
However, and since the coming of its new president, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, a new sense of intellectual boldness and initiatives have been offloaded into the existing development thinking of the AfDB. Under its new leadership, there is now an increasing concern with the governance variables on the continent, and the challenge of enabling and empowering good governance that could serve as the fundamental basis for the democratic experiment in Africa. The most recent of these new initiatives, which the president signaled in his acceptance speech, is the AfDB High5s – critical elements that are considered to be key to transforming the development efforts in Africa. These High5s are: light up and power Africa, feed Africa, industrialise Africa, integrate Africa, and improve the quality of life for the people of Africa.
The energetic engagement with development, which the AfDB represents, through its even more energetic leadership, represents a deeper need to unravel the dynamics of governance and its connection with leadership. This is very core of the development predicament: the challenge of transforming policies into those specific and transforming initiatives that, all together, constitute good governance that is felt tangibly by Africans.
Central to the High5s and their achievements and as the leadership of the AfDB recognises, is institutional leadership and its influence on performance and productivity. The usual trajectory in leadership studies is to focus on individuals as the drivers of governance and development. I will be adding another dimension to this tradition which has the capacity to deepen our understanding of the imperatives of good governance.
The fundamental issue that concerns me is the role of the AfDB, and African think tanks, in facilitating and establishing policy advisory systems that will allow governments and non-governmental organisations to work together as strategic policymaking partners. PAS is critical to the effort to define and redefine the governance trajectory all over the world. Governance is concerned with government’s ability to put policies and resources together in creative ways to empower the people.
The traditional understanding of governance dynamics has usually been anchored on government and state actors as occupying the “commanding height” of determining governance variables. However, by the 1980s and 1990s, there was already considerable unease about the capacity of the modern state, standing alone, to entirely oversee the policy making processes and facilitate efficient and effective service delivery to the populace. From this period, governance failure characterised most African states.
In fact, the failed state index is constituted around the inability of state government to achieve governance goals and objectives.
The think tanks play a very prominent role in the understanding of non-governmental organisations. As policy institutes, think tanks are characterised by its research and advocacy orientation that, most of the time, is also coloured by specific ideological perspectives.
There is therefore a sustainability crisis already with 30 per cent of African think tanks are already in a terrible state, another 30 per cent are fragile and failing.
The fact therefore is that Africa is ‘under-think tanked’, if that language is permitted. Whereas the United States has close to 2,000 think tanks with over 400 in Washington D.C. alone, including the number one think tank in the world, the Brooking Institution, Nigeria has 51 think tanks, South Africa, 92, Kenya, 56, Israel, 69, on and on. Unfortunately, many of the Nigerian think tanks are think tanks in name, and going by global rating, Nigeria is not really regarded as a knowledge hub in spite of the intimidating array of global intellectuals and high-end human capital it habours.
In terms of taking think tanks to next level, however, there is a lot of lesson to learn from the fate that befell highly rated think tanks with such intimidating future as the Development Policy Centre, Ibadan and the Centre for Advanced Social Science, Port Harcourt, with respect to how think tanks could outlive their founders.
Tackling good governance in Africa therefore requires establishing and consolidating an adequate PAS that will bring the governments and NGOs into a tight and mutually efficient and strategic policymaking partnership.
Again researchers need training themselves to recognise that the language of papers meant for promotion is not the language of policy briefs and policy papers. The resentment between these two key actors in the policymaking process need strong intellectualised administrative leadership of the Simeon Adebo-type to redress as part of drive to take strategic policymaking partnerships to next level.
With the foregoing, we arrive back at the essentially responsibility of the AfDB. I see this responsibility as that of the establishment and optimisation of the policy advisory systems. This is because the AfDB is uniquely placed as a mediator between African states and the NGOs. The first challenge of the PAS is political. PAS depends solely on government’s willingness to act from the recognition that strategic policymaking is critical to good governance, and that think tanks are worthy partners. The AfDB is also faced with the challenge of identifying and mobilising those think tanks that have proved their efficiency and strategic relevance in organisational terms. Much more important, however, are the structural difficulties of the policy cycle within which the major actors are to work.
The first structural difficulty involves the hostile relationship between politicians and public servants, divided by different and contradictory interests. While the politicians are concerned about political capital deriving from policies that win even if not properly designed, civil servants are concerned with the complex details of policy design, implementation and management. The second structural issue concerns systemic hindrances to innovativeness. On the one hand, public servants and policymakers may not properly understand what constitutes innovation or innovativeness. On the other, there may also not be sufficient incentives by the system to exploit the crucial dimensions of innovation – especially invention and experimentation – in ways that transform policies. The third structural difficulty concerns the management of institutional memory by public servants. This problem inevitably ties in with the wrong approaches often taken to the learning process in the policymaking dynamics.
The AfDB is therefore tasked with the core responsibility of consolidating the policy advisory systems in member states that will lead to the adoption of a flexible, intelligent and innovative policymaking process capable of meeting the policy challenges Africa confronts in the 21st century. Such a policymaking process must be forward-looking, evidence-based, outward-looking, evaluative, inclusive and holistic with the capacity to be creative. This, for instance, will require not only the modernising of the policymaking frameworks of member states, but also professionalisation of the various policymaking structures.
Under the ardent enthusiasm and intelligent leadership of Adesina, the High 5s, and the AfDB’s reform-mindedness, we can sincerely hope for a steady unravelling of the development challenge in Africa. And the AfDB itself already realises the significance of the governance space and the imperative of collaborative partnership which defines its own operational dynamics.
Prof. Olaopa is the Executive Vice-Chairman, Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy
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