Mutual Accountability and Good Governance in Africa: The Role of Development Partners

By Ambassador, Shinsuke Horuchi, Japan

We made numerous commitments for example at Comst Group meetings and others. Let me dwell on a bit more fundamental issues or commitments.

What we are concerned most is the accountability of governments on their political governance-- the way in which nations are managed. Our concern is not for the donor community alone, but more importantly for Africa people.

1. Concepts of ownership and partnership between African countries and donor countries were discussed as early as in 1993 at TICAD. I, when the concept of ownership did not enjoy a wide use in international community. Original intention of the ownership, I believe meant that African countries take a full responsibility in planning, formulating and implementing development strategies and assume the responsibility for the results that could be either successes or failures. In other words, we believe that truly self-reliance efforts are the only way for African development. Some Asian countries recorded a remarkable growth, not because of assistance or commitment by donor community or dependence on donor community, but their own efforts. They have used assistance very effectively. Self-reliance is exactly the concept taken up by NEPAD, which is the political commitment by African leaders. But at the same time developed countries are committed in assisting African countries as development partners. TICAD and other initiatives demonstrated clearly this commitment. Then, comes the concept of mutual responsibility. I do not believe this concept is nothing new in substance. Once two parties are involved in committing themselves, both parties should fulfill their part of commitment and they should be mutually accountable. This will increase significantly communication between African countries and developed countries. If I may add, the exercise would improve the understanding of dialogues and policies on Africa among our people that is essential part of continuing our support to Africa.

2. Since the late 1980s, unprecedented political and economic reforms were undertaken by many African countries and Japan values them highly and has been supporting them in various measures. However, institutional reform itself does not guaranty good governance. A free and fair election under the multi-party system allows the concentration of power, but the other side of coin of democracy is oversight or check of the use of power. As we all know the use of power is essential in democracy. Political reforms in some African countries has not firmly established the system of check and balance in government. Institutional changes are there, but operational changes are in some cases kept minimum.

3. Concentration of power without checks and balance leads easily informal politics as against formal politics, in simple language the rule of man, instead of the rule of law. Informal politics can be observed in any country but in Africa it seems that informal politics takes often upper hands over formal politics. It introduces into the politics (the neo-patrimonial or the patronage) the system that leads to misuse of national resources and fails to accumulate capital for investment. Even assistance projects are unable mark nation wide impacts on the development process. These are major negative outcome of poor governance.

4. I mentioned earlier that Japan supports political and economic reforms in Africa in various ways. The TICAD process (Tokyo International Conference for African Development) since is one of our major contributions. I believed TICAD offered the international community a plenty of opportunities to discuss the rules governing globalization and African development and to examine closely development strategies that let to re-examination of development strategies and principles such as the role of the state, poverty.