Obama's speech sparks calls for reform across Africa

[ProSense]

Obama's speech sparks calls for reform across Africa

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) – US President Barack Obama's condemnation of Africa's "big men" resonated across the continent, creating a chorus of calls Monday for better governance in countries from Nigeria to Zimbabwe.

Obama received an ecstatic welcome during his one-day visit Saturday with huge crowds lining the streets of Ghana's capital Accra, where he urged Africans to demand stronger government in order to seize control of their own future.

"It resonates as a real declaration of war against the dysfunctions that have paralysed Africa for five centuries," said Guy Parfait Songue, a political science professor at the University of Douala in Cameroon.

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"The general feeling is that Obama is 'punishing' the Kenya government for its slow pace of reforms and its unwillingness to deal with corruption," read a Daily Nation opinion piece in Nairobi.

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"He made an important and unprecedented pronouncement for the whole of Africa of partnership based on mutual respect in which Africans take their destiny into their own hands," said Emmanuel Akwetey, director of Ghana's Institute for Democratic Governance.

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[scheming daemons]

1. And people think words don't mean things...... sometimes words ARE action

[applegrove]

2. I hope you are right.

[PretzelWarrior]

3. they are. it should be obvious....but the power of words to change things for better or worse

is tremendous. Most sizable actions that are meaningful and lasting take many people and start with eloquent words inspiring a vision and building belief.

[applegrove]

4. But only certain people can deliver words like that. And Obama is one of those rare ones. Imagine

how much inspiration he will inspire in 8 years. Makes me want to grin from ear to ear.

[HamdenRice]

5. I'm not sure that this kind of speech is helpful

In fact, I think it's more aimed at the domestic audience than at Africa. The reason is that African countries' political problems are really, really complicated -- much more complicated than the existence of "big men" or simple corruption.

The biggest problem is that people in government have very, very few levers to actually implement policy. The reason rulers are often brutal isn't because they're strong, but because they are so weak.

Basically if you can't pass even a simple law and have it enforced in the provinces, the only lever of policy you have is the army.

In the smaller countries, there's almost no way to collect taxes, so governments rely on aid.

Think about it: If you are the reforming president of Liberia (Mrs. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf) and you want to pave the road from Monrovia to Greenville, where will the money come from? Hundreds of thousands of peasant farmers don't have their taxes deducted from their paychecks. There simply is no collectible revenue source.

Under colonialism, taxes were generally collected through force, but a democracy can't send the police to every hut to collect taxes.

The other source of taxes under colonialism -- the most reliable for poor countries, and the source the US used before income taxes -- is taxes on exports and exports collected at the port. But taxes on exports are now completely illegal under the WTO, and taxes on imports are severely limited as "preferential."

The only way to get local officials to do anything if you are the leader of a country is to bribe them. Which means you have to collect bribes yourself.

Several of the most corrupt African political leaders who were thought to have stashed millions of dollars in Switzerland were found to have actually kept very little of the money they stole. It had been used, in a kind of parallel government revenue system to get things done.

It's an insoluble problem unless the WTO allows these countries to re-institute export taxes. Until then, nothing will change.

This kind of speech simplifies a horribly complicated set of problems largely created by the international trade system, but it's what people want to hear -- that the problems are created by "bad people."