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Poor governance, rising urbanisation and youth unemployment increase fragility levels in Africa

Tuesday February 04 2014
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Fragility could appear across Africa in different places and forms, at national or local levels, including in countries not currently classified as fragile. TEA Graphic

For Africa, these are trying times. Rapid urbanisation and new natural resource finds as well as youth unemployment, inequality, social exclusion and a fast changing climate are straining the continent, leading to a risk of increasing fragility in coming years. 

These pressures, experts warn are intensifying and becoming difficult for national institutions and political processes to manage, creating a risk of violence.

As a result, fragility could appear across Africa in different places and forms, at national or local levels, including in countries not currently classified as fragile, say researchers at the African Development Bank (AfDB) in a report released recently in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

AfDB says it is dedicating at least $1.5 billion to fragile States in Africa for the next three years to help strengthen their governance institutions, create jobs for youths and streamline their extractive industries.

AfDB cites a fall in the quality of governance and poor management of youth employment, urbanisation and climate change as factors that could raise the level of fragility of a country.

Findings from a report on fragile States sponsored by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show that whereas most countries in fragile situations were low-income economies a decade ago, today almost half are middle-income.

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The situation is expected to worsen by 2015 as developed economies, strained financially at home, increasingly find it difficult to increase funding to fragile states.

OECD estimates that about half of fragile states are expected to see a drop in aid by 2015. “This fall in aid is likely to occur at the same time as poverty becomes increasingly concentrated in fragile states” says the OECD report.

OECD considers all countries in the larger East African region, apart from Tanzania as fragile states, based on a 2013 report.  Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, DR Congo and Eritrea are listed as some of Africa’s fragile states. Others are South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya.

Relatively stable countries are also prone to fragility. “Many of the drivers of conflict in Africa are regional in nature. Illicit trade in arms and conflict minerals spills across national boundaries, as do refugees and armed groups, fuelling conflict and spreading instability,” says the report prepared by the High-Level Panel on Fragile States under the leadership of Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Currently, the greater East African and Great Lakes regions are facing prospects of instability with conflicts in the DR Congo, South Sudan, Central African Republic and Somalia. In the Central African Republic, ex-rebel leader Michel Djotodia seized power in March and forced President Francois Bozize to flee into exile.

READ: Spectre of war returns to haunt region

In South Sudan, in mid-December, differences in the ruling SPLM party turned into intense fighting between President Salva Kiir’s government troops and forces loyal to former vice president Riek Machar.

And as 2013 came to a close, the DR Congo army repulsed several attacks on December 30 in the capital Kinshasa by a “terrorist group,” according to the government.

The AfDB said in a note in early January that this unrest has left the EAC region surrounded by unstable countries, exposing it to the risk of a “coup contagion.” The bank argues that the success of a coup in one country increases the likelihood of a neighbouring country falling to the same fate.

Military coups were widespread and frequent in much of Africa during the 1970s and 1980s, but they tapered off between the mid- 1990s and 2000s, as progress was made by many African countries in improving governance and reforming their economies.

Between 1989 and 2009, sub-Saharan Africa experienced 271 non-state conflicts, resulting in 60,000 direct casualties, says AfDB, adding that there is a clear link between conflict and inequality.

“Differences in welfare and access to economic resources among local groups increase the risks of localised violence. Marginalised groups that lack the means to rebel against the state may contend with neighbouring groups for access to resources. Major political transitions — particularly transitions from authoritarian rule — can also raise the risk of conflict. States in transition may lack the ability, willingness or legitimacy to constrain inter-group violence” says AfDB in a note.

Cyrille Ndayirukiye, director of the Eastern African Standby Force, said that the common mistake has always been assuming that institutions in fragile countries are strong enough to hold the country together whereas these institutions often break down due to the struggle for power and vested interests.

“Sometime people can be in the struggle together for a common cause but later differ. The solution is to have a permanent all inclusive approach in which stakeholders within the country and the region engage each other,” said Maj Gen (rtd) Ndayirukiye.

In the rest of Africa, Mali, Libya, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Burundi, Rwanda, Guinea-Bissau and Eritrea are some of the countries that have experienced violence in the past 20 years. An analysis by Mthuli Ncube, the AfDB chief economist and vice president, shows that conflict and fragility impede efforts to reduce poverty, and the prevention of conflict through development is cheaper than dealing with the aftermath of conflict.

The state of governance in East African countries has recently come into question as measured through the Mo Ibrahim Index on African governance.

This is especially on two parameters: Safety and the rule of law — which assesses a state’s ability to provide its citizens with an effective judicial system; the right to safety; accountability of public officials; and prevention, control and elimination of corruption in the country— and participation and human rights — which looks at the right to vote; the right to a fair election; freedom to express views on political issues and to hold governments accountable for commitments made under national and international law.

EDITORIAL: Fragility of ‘democratic’ states underlined

The EAC countries, with the exception of Uganda, have recorded declining scores on one or both of these measures over the past few years.

Burundi recorded the steepest decline in safety and the rule of law, plunging 8.1 percentage points between 2007 and 2012. Rwanda fell 5.6 points over the same period; Kenya dropped 3.4 points, while Tanzania fell 2.9 points.

The steepest decline in participation and human rights is seen in Kenya, which dropped five points over the five-year period; Burundi fell 4.5 points, while Tanzania fell 3.1 points. Rwanda recorded a modest increase of 2.2 points in this measure during the same period, but it is only Uganda that improved both measures, gaining 2.4 points in its measure of safety and the rule of law, and 4.6 points in participation and human rights.

“The absence of strong institutions feeds off and exacerbates political and ethnic differences attracting ‘opportunistic investment,’ which does not help the country to develop. Hence, poverty prevails and the battle over limited resources becomes inevitable. So starts, ends and continues the vicious cycle of fragility and underdevelopment,” says Tabu Abdhallah Manirakiza, Minister of Finance in Burundi, in the AfDB report.

Data by the AfDB shows that across Africa, the burden of unemployment falls heavily on young people. In North Africa, for example, youth unemployment in 2012 was 3.4 times the adult unemployment rate, and higher still among young women at 37 per cent compared with 18 per cent among young men.

In sub-Saharan Africa, official youth unemployment averaged 11.8 per cent in 2012, which was twice the adult unemployment rate.

“In the absence of formal employment prospects, most young people are forced into low productivity activities in the informal sector, where their prospects for advancement are limited. This creates a pool of disaffected young people who are vulnerable to radicalisation or recruitment into criminal enterprises” says the AfDB report.

The AfDB High Level Panel identified two ways of addressing conflict and fragility in Africa. The first is mounting an effective policy response to the most disruptive economic, social and environmental changes facing the continent. The second is creating resilient states and societies able to manage those pressures.

Additional reporting by Christine Mungai

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