The ANC is credited with being the first inclusive African liberation movement, uniting South Africans from diverse ethnic and economic groups. The ANC led the opposition to apartheid, the state-enforced racial segregation that persisted in South Africa from 1948 to 1994.

The government’s ban on organized opposition meant the ANC was soon classified as a terrorist organization, and many top ANC leaders spent decades in South Africa’s prisons. Most notably, Nelson Mandela served 27 years in prison before leading negotiations that led South Africa to a multi-racial democracy.

In 1994, the first multi-racial elections brought an end to apartheid and elected Mandela as South Africa’s first black president. During his term, the ANC-led government committed itself to reforming the country by focusing on social issues that were neglected during the apartheid era, such as unemployment, housing shortages, and crime.

There have been four democratic elections in South Africa since 1994, and each victorious candidate has been a member of the ANC. This is both an indication of the ANC’s dominance in South Africa, and the reason why the weekend’s celebrations were met with criticism that the ANC has not done enough to keep the promises made in 1994 to combat ongoing problems of poverty, inequality and unemployment.

Some observers of this weekend’s celebrations are concerned that the ANC is losing its inclusive, non-tribal and non-racial ethos, enriching the few, mostly politically connected, rather than the poor majority.

In the view of some critics, ANC leaders are increasingly chosen by a small group of people, selected for how best they can capture competing interests. Opposition parties are either poorly organized or racially homogeneous and have little chance to secure broad support, so the ANC will likely remain unchallenged for some time.

Without real opposition, change must come from within. ANC party conferences in June and December are an opportunity for the ANC to return to its roots and maintain South Africa as a global example for genuine democracy, equitable economic development and peaceful racial integration.

Neither is my queasiness about donors not being held to account for their failure to meet previous commitments, nor about the fact that the aid effectiveness agenda remains somewhat poorly linked to evidence about development outcomes. Nor is it about the fact that there’s little honest discussion of the risks that are involved when investing in development, particularly in places with challenging governance environments. The queasiness comes from the fact that there remains a sense that “we” -– aid industry insiders, with money and power -– know best; as if having money and power necessarily means that one has relevant expertise. However, an antidote to my queasiness may be at hand.

Discussions at Busan briefly highlighted the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and its role in pushing forward greater transparency and accountability among both developed and developing countries. At a joint Busan event with Tony Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative, USAID played the opening video from the OGP event in September. By making the link between OGP and the aid effectiveness agenda -– a link noted by Owen Barder, too -– USAID made clear that making development cooperation more effective is not just about providing better services and vaccinating more children, but is also about providing people in developing countries with the information that they need to make good choices and to hold their governments to account.

So, while I left Busan feeling queasy, I also have a sense of optimism. Beyond aid, through open governance, there is the promise of open development -– a democratic development where people, not “experts,” have the power. As Rakesh Rajani puts it, “The purpose of development should not be to create and apply expert solutions, but rather to help enrich the conditions in which people can do more of what they already do well — by making it easier for people to get, compare and share information; to learn from each other and outsiders about how they have made things work; to search, experiment with and craft solutions; and to team up to get things done” (World Bank, Open Development report, September 2011).

The Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness isn’t even finished yet, but we can already log big wins for transparent and accountable aid. In Secretary Clinton’s keynote address at the forum in South Korea, she officially announced that the United States would be signing the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), something that ONE has been pushing hard on in advance of Busan. As ONE’s Executive Director, Sheila Nix said:

“Secretary Clinton’s announcement that the United States will join the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) reinforces America’s leadership in making foreign assistance more transparent and accountable. Being open and clear about how the U.S. is spending foreign aid—where and on what—will help make aid more efficient and accountable to US taxpayers and will maximize resources to help those living on less than $1.25 lift themselves out of poverty.”

The US announcement followed on from another big announcement by Canada on Monday that they would also be joining IATI. The addition of these two major donors will bring the total number of IATI signatories to 26 and increase IATI’s coverage of aid to over 75 percent of global ODA flows.

This is great news for ONE members who supported the Make Aid Transparent campaign. On Wednesday at the forum the Executive Director of Publish What You Fund (PWYF), Karin Christiansen, presented the Make Aid Transparent petition during a high-level panel on transparency and accountability. Exactly 63,905 people signed the petition from more than 180 countries, underscoring global public support for aid transparency.

ONE’s Alan Hudson and Sara Messer present the Make Aid Transparent petition to UK Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell, along with Karin Christiansen of PWYF and partners.

But more and better information is useless if people can’t access or understand it to make aid more efficient and hold governments to account. In order to improve accessibility and make aid info more user-friendly, the Open Aid Partnership was officially launched during the High Level Forum. The Open Aid Partnership is an initiative started by the World Bank Institute and other partner countries to provide visual mappings of aid projects, allowing for better donor coordination and targeting of aid. It also provides the technology for citizens to give feedback on development projects through mobile texting and online submissions, allowing for real-time monitoring and accountability! ONE supports the Open Aid Partnership and calls on more countries to sign up and provide their aid data. For donors that are already signatory to IATI, this is the next step to put transparency into action and turn aid information into development results.

Last week in Tanzania, nearly 100 civil society groups and 12 international organizations, including the International Budget Partnership, Greenpeace, ONE and many smaller organizations from across the globe, launched a global effort to make public budgets transparent, participatory and accountable. Budgets are the most critical tool that governments have to address problems like poverty, provide critical services like education and health care, and invest in their country’s future. When the political speeches end, it is how governments actually manage funds to meet their promises and priorities that matters.

The Global Movement for Budget Transparency, Accountability, and Participation envisions public finance systems that make all budget information easily accessible, provide meaningful opportunities for citizens and civil society to participate in budget decisions and oversight throughout the process, and include strong institutions to hold governments accountable for how they raise and spend the public’s money.

The timing of this effort capitalizes on a number of significant events that have built momentum to substantially improve how governments operate, including how they manage public funds to meet citizens’ needs and to address persistent challenges. The most dramatic of these events is the “Arab Spring,” which has created an unprecedented opportunity for democratic and responsive governments in Africa, and has also sent a wake-up call to oppressive regimes around the world, acting as a beacon of hope to their people. There are also important international, multi-stakeholder initiatives that have been launched in the last year to promote government that is open, responsive, and accountable. These include the Open Government Partnership and the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency, both of which bring together governments, civil society and industry to promote transparency, increase civic participation, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

Though these events and initiatives hold great promise, without an organized, skilled and active civil society movement that can connect the institutions involved with the priorities and needs of ordinary citizens, there is a danger that these opportunities will fall short of their potential. The organizations meeting in Tanzania aim to be the driving force behind this movement and signed a Declaration of Principles on behalf of “…citizens and civil society organizations from around the globe, united by the shared conviction that inclusive and open public budgets are critical to achieving a world in which all human beings enjoy their full human rights –- civil, political, social, economic, cultural and environmental.” Budget transparency, alongside efforts to make aid more transparent, can play an important role in enabling citizens to hold their governments to account.

The Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) released its inaugural special report analyzing the effects of the “Arab Spring” on democracy in sub-Saharan Africa. Unprecedented popular protests in North Africa demanding greater political freedom, dignity and economic opportunity have captivated the world’s attention since they burst onto the global stage in January 2011. The subsequent resignations of long-time autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia, the toppling of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, and a shift toward constitutional monarchy in Morocco have dramatically reshaped state-citizen relations in this long static region.

The Arab Spring raised speculation about whether it would be followed by similar mass uprisings in sub-Saharan Africa. Attempts at similar mass protests occurred in a number of countries including Djibouti, Kenya, Swaziland and Uganda but were short-lived and brutally suppressed. The limited spillover effect between North and sub-Saharan Africa led to speculation about Africans being too poor, rural and technologically disconnected and brutalized to organize into the kind of protest movements that would topple the “big men.”

Despite its historic significance, the Arab Spring is not a driver of democratic transformation in sub Saharan-Africa; it will merely accelerate processes that have been unfolding since the democracy movements of the 1990s. Africa has made considerable if not linear progress towards democracy over the past 20 years, a process that was unfolding long before the Arab Spring. Genuine transformation and democratization occurs through sustained pressure for reform rooted in institution building and citizen participation rather than spontaneous protests that flare up for a day and cannot be sustained.

Fanning the Flame

Despite the major social, cultural and economic differences between North Africa and the rest of the continent, the mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt have caught the attention of millions of Africans from all walks of life. Expressions of frustration with political exclusion, corruption, yawning inequality, and impunity seen on the streets of Cairo and Tunis have resonated deeply across the continent. Most importantly, the Arab Spring has increased what Africans expect from their governments in terms of governance, transparency and accountability. While Africa has not seen dramatic, mass-street protests, a democratic transformation is unfolding. Important structural factors such as greater access to information and communication technology, a growing urban population, a more sophisticated civil society, emerging institutional checks and balances, and the expanded awareness of global governance norms, have positioned Africa for a democratic surge. African citizens are much less willing to accept unconstitutional changes, abuses of power, gross corruption and state violence against the population. This new attitude has been influenced by the key lesson from the Arab Spring; that citizens can and must confront excesses of their government if they expect it to change.

While the Arab Spring has not led to public confrontation between the masses and governments in sub-Saharan Africa, it has increased the potential for political transformation. There are powerful expectations for a more robust form of democracy and considerable momentum for democratic gains in sub-Saharan Africa over the next several years; however, these advances will not be automatic. Civil society leaders, development partners and reformist political parties will need to rise to the occasion to seize this window of opportunity, articulating a vision for the future, prioritizing the types of changes that are needed, and organizing societies from the community level up to press for these changes.

This is great news and it will hopefully mean that more legitimate businesses will be setting up on the continent –- something that is crucial for long-term poverty reduction in Africa.

With nearly 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa still living on less than $1.25 a day, there is a need for business growth in order to provide jobs and economic growth to reduce poverty. Jobs provide an essential form of income for the poor with which to lift themselves out of poverty, and every extra percentage point of economic growth means more money collected from taxes to pay for schools, more health facilities built and more safe drinking water supplied. Admittedly, some businesses do not always behave in a way that puts their workers first, so employment and investment standards are simultaneously needed in Africa to ensure the poorest are not exploited. However, because business growth is crucial for poverty alleviation in Africa, the Doing Business results are very encouraging.

This year, in sub-Saharan Africa — a region where eight years ago, little attention was paid to the regulatory environment — 78 percent of economies implemented Doing Business reforms, compared to an average of only 56 percent over the last six years. These changes to regulations can be highly beneficial. In Ghana, for example, in 2005, it used take business owners nearly three months to simply register a business. Now, following targeted aid programs and government leadership (which changed and enforced the regulatory process) registration time has been brought down to less than two weeks. The results are dramatic –- new business registrations are up by 87 percent with more than 21,000 new businesses created.

However, challenges still remain: getting an electricity connection costs more on average in sub-Saharan Africa than any other part of the world, at 5,400 percent of the income per capita. Compared to processes in the UK to set up a business, in Uganda, entrepreneurs face three times the number of procedures, double the time and a cost of more than 90 percent of their average annual income. More still needs to be done to address these limitations to business growth and the appreciation of environmental and employment standards. But overall, as the Doing Business report shows, progress is being made in the right direction, which is encouraging.

Additionally, these improvements to the regulatory environment are also only one part of the story. Africa is rising.

Growth is no longer restricted to resource-rich countries as the caricature goes; growth in 18 non-oil exporting countries averaged 5.5 percent annually over the last decade. Africa is also projected to have 128 million households with discretionary income by 2020 -– more than double than two decades ago. Africa now has more than 700 Bilateral Investment Treaties in place to protect investors. Also, when the rest of the Western world are only seeing annual growth rates of 1 percent, sub-Saharan Africa is seeing rates of 5 percent.

There has never been a better time to invest on the continent and businesses need to realize it –- not just for their private profit but to bring about the growth and job creation needed for poverty alleviation in Africa.

This country-by-country and project-by-project reporting will give citizens the information they need to hold their leaders and companies accountable. ONE and the Publish What You Pay coalition have been working hard for this change and have warmly welcomed the proposed law.
ONE’s co-founder Bono had this to say on the move:

“This is a serious step forward by Barroso and Barnier, who have thrown their weight behind the fight by the citizens of poor countries to ensure their natural resource wealth turns into actual wealth for the people – and doesn’t line the pockets of dodgy dictators or distant exploiters. The next step is when the great activist himself, Bill Gates Jnr, presents the case for these legally binding measures to the world leaders of the G20, along with other historic proposals on financing the fight against poverty.”

Our Brussels Director Eloise Todd explains what needs to happen next to get the proposed law onto the statute books:

“President Barroso and Commissioner Barnier have shown real leadership. It is now the responsibility of the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament to ensure that these proposals are implemented in full, which we trust will happen given the strong support from the French, British and the European Parliament. In some areas we will look to the Council and Parliament to tighten up the regulation, for example in removing the exemption for countries that would rather keep information secret. It is also essential that the provisions on project-level disclosure are strengthened. The murky deals between extractive companies and despots must become a thing of the past. The EU and its companies will now have to decide which side of history they want to be on.”

The issue of extractive industry transparency is crucial for development prospects in Africa. Huge flows of money are coming into the continent for natural resources ($246 billion in 2009) and yet far too much of it is not being spent on reducing poverty and strengthening public services. Transparency over individual projects gives citizens and activists the information they need to hold their governments accountable for money coming in.

The move by Europe complements ONE’s campaign for section 1504 of the US Dodd-Frank Act, which ensures all US-listed extractive industry companies will shortly be publishing their payments to governments. We are now moving towards a global standard of mandatory transparency, which was endorsed by the G8 and we hope to see progress on at the G20 next week.

Liberian elections. Photo courtesy of United Nations in Liberia

Liberians defied the rains this week and turned out in the thousands to participate in the country’s second election since it emerged from a 14-year civil war in 2003.

This year’s elections are historic for Liberia, as they are the first Liberia-controlled elections. They are being described world over as a test of Liberia’s fragile democracy. The 2005 election was managed by the United Nations.

About 1.8 million people were expected to vote in the election.

Incumbent President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is up for reelection for a second term in office in a hotly contested race against 14 others. Analysts say that her stiffest challenger will be former UN diplomat, Winston Tubman, whose running mate is George Weah, a former international football star who lost the 2003 election to President Sirleaf in a runoff.

President Sirleaf, who only last week shared a Nobel Peace Prize with two other women, for her work in advancing the democratic space in Liberia is not having an easy ride. This itself is testimony to why she won the prize. Some say that the Nobel Laureate couldn’t have received her prize at a better time, and that the Nobel Peace Prize could have helped boost her campaign at the last minute. Liberia has also seen growing foreign investment and got rid of most of its debts, and some argue that President Sirleaf is a favorite among donor countries.

But many analysts predict that this election could be too close to call, and are gearing up for a possible re-run in November. Her supporters admit that some of the challenges she faces are that, “her greatest achievements are intangible — peace, security, investor confidence.”

On the other hand the opposition’s main critique of President Sirleaf is that while Liberia is debt free, millions still live in abject poverty.

A total of 150 observers from different countries are in Liberia to monitor the presidential elections, while it’s borders remain closed until Wednesday for security reasons. Coming so close after Zambia’s successful elections, if Liberia passes the test for a peaceful election, (and all signs are that it will), this will be a sure sign that Africa is experiencing a renaissance in democracy.

Mo Ibrahim is often hailed as a hero in Africa. His mobile-phone company, Celtel, has helped to open up communication across the continent, enabling people – civil society activists included – to access and share information. He is now spending the money he earned to try to change the values of African leaders. Each year, he offers the Ibrahim Prize, which bestows five million dollars on an African leader who is elected to office, promotes democracy, does not steal from the people, and transfers power peacefully. The Prize is intended to reward and perhaps to incentivize good leadership. The prize has previously been won by Festus Mogae of Botswana and Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique. Due to a lack of suitable candidates the prize was not awarded in 2009 and 2010. The 2011 Ibrahim Prize winner is Pedro Verona Pires, former president of Cape Verde. He is credited with steering his country from autocracy to a prosperous democracy and leaving power at the end of his second presidential term. Cape Verde has consistently ranked second on the Ibrahim Index over the past four years.

With citizen revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, Africa is undergoing perhaps its greatest political upheaval since the end of colonialism. The release of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance assessing and ranking the performance of Africa’s fifty-three governments has come at a fitting time. The index uses eighty six indicators to measure governance in four broad categories – Safety and Rule of Law, Participation and Human rights, Sustainable Economic Opportunity and Human Development. This information is then compiled into an overall score for each country, running from 0 to 100, with 100 being best. The idea of the Ibrahim Index is to empower African citizens with the information that they need to assess and compare – amongst countries and over time – the performance of their governments and leaders.

Key Findings of the 2011 index: It’s a question of balance

The fifth annual Ibrahim Index of African Governance argues persuasively that a balanced, equitable and inclusive approach to governance is the foundation for the development outcomes that really matter; helping to ensure that families can put food on the table, that children can go to school, that there is quality health care, that women can walk the streets safely, and that people are free to participate in the decisions that affect their lives. The 2011 report illustrates that most African countries across the continent have improved in both Sustainable Economic Opportunity and Human Development. Countries that practise a balanced approach to all aspects of governance have achieved the most success. Over the last five years, Mauritius, Cape Verde, Botswana, Seychelles and South Africa – the countries that have consistently ranked in the top five for overall governance performance – have performed highly in all four categories. Similarly, countries that have improved significantly over this period have improved evenly in all four categories.

However the general trend in Africa, similar to last year’s findings, is one of imbalance. The majority of countries have regressed in Safety and Rule of Law and Participation and Human Rights. In the 2011 Index report, Ibrahim warns that “if economic progress is not translated into better quality of life and respect for citizens’ rights, we will witness more Tahrir Squares in Africa.” He adds that the rise of civil society seen in the Afro-Arab spring is irreversible and African leaders should not assume that economic development is a substitute for personal freedom and citizen participation. Other interesting findings over the past five years include:

• The top three performers for 2011 are Mauritius 82.5, Cape Verde 79.0 and Botswana 76.1. The bottom three performers are Zimbabwe 30.9, Chad 30.6 and Somalia 7.9.
• The top three improvers are Liberia which improved in Safety and Rule of Law, Participation and Human Rights and Sustainable Economic Opportunity, Sierra Leone showed improvement in Safety and Rule of Law and Sustainable Economic Opportunity and Egypt which showed great improvement in Sustainable Economic Opportunity.
• Countries seeing the most slippage include Madagascar which dropped by -11.6 overall, and Comoros and Guinea-Bissau which both dropped by -3.4. Somalia has consistently scored poorly on the index dropping from a score of 11 to 8 since 2005.
• The two countries emerging from lengthy civil conflicts – Liberia and Sierra Leone – have shown the most striking improvements over the past five years. This has been achieved through even progress across all four categories, building on strong new leadership – particularly in Liberia where President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson was recently awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize for her peace building and leadership efforts.
• Egypt and Tunisia both rank in the top ten for overall governance quality. This is driven by strong performances in Human Development, and to a lesser extent Sustainable Economic Opportunity. However, both countries perform particularly poorly in Participation and Human Rights. The ability of citizens to freely participate in the political process is in itself a measure of the legitimacy of government. A healthy and educated population that perceives itself not to have access to political information and whose rights are likely to be abused by the state may turn to violence to make themselves heard.
• Libya is ranked in the bottom half of the Index in 2010. Similarly to Egypt and Tunisia, Libya shows imbalance in performance between Human Development and Participation and Human Rights. In Libya’s case the imbalance is extreme with the country ranking in the top five for Human Development and in the bottom three for Participation and Human Rights.

Overall, the 2011 Index report shows that African governments will have to adjust the ways in which they engage with citizens by being inclusive and transparent about resource allocation, creating concrete, viable opportunities for Africa’s growing youth population, and encouraging full civic participation of the wider population. International partners should increase their focus and support for the efforts of African citizens and governments to move forward with governance in a balanced, equitable and inclusive manner. Alongside our work to hold governments in the developed world to account for their commitments, ONE intends to build on its existing work on extractives transparency, putting the transparency and accountability agenda central to what we do.

People taking control of their own development?

To coincide with its Annual Meetings, the World Bank recently published a report on Open Development, an idea whose time has come. The idea is best captured in the contribution by Rakesh Rajani –- a member of ONE’s Africa Policy Advisory Board and the head of Twaweza -– who explains that “the purpose of development should be not to create and apply expert solutions, but rather to help enrich the conditions in which people can do more of what they already do well. By making it easier to get, compare and share information; learn from each other and from outsiders how they have made things work; search, experiment with and craft solutions; and team up to get things done.” (See also Rakesh Rajani’s inspirational comments at the launch of the Open Government Partnership -– 52 minutes into the video. Or, see a transcript of the talk here.) I explore the concept of Open Development by answering three key questions.

What is Open development? Open Development is about giving renewed emphasis to citizens — the intended beneficiaries of aid. Open development recognizes that states have to change their role and share power with other levels of governance, including with non-governmental actors and indeed, citizens. The World Bank has already taken the first step through its Open Data Initiative by highlighting the importance of information and knowledge in changing the way citizens engage with governments. Open Development puts people back at the heart of development by recognizing that the way government works and the way in which citizens interact with their governments has profound impacts on growth and poverty levels in developing countries.

Open development focuses on participation and collaboration between state and non-state actors in the management and use of aid, natural resources and information necessary for development. It aims to increase access to government information and make it easier for citizens to participate in setting the development agenda according to local priorities. In this way, progress is defined by local activists and citizens rather than primarily by experts and donors.

How does Open Development differ from traditional development cooperation? By making information available to citizens, Open Development enables a wide range of communities to work together and solve problems ranging from local service delivery to monitoring aid and budget allocations in parliament. Such approaches have been used for many years as part of social accountability initiatives, but they have received a boost in recent years through the use of new technologies for transparency and accountability. For example, Huduma allows Kenyans to report on service delivery issues via text. In Nigeria, Your Budgit visualizes federal and state budgets in simplified formats for citizens. This particular application creates a graphic analysis and follow-up of presidential electoral promises. Bungeni is a parliamentary and legislative information system developed to make East African parliaments more accessible to citizens. New technology adapted to local need is allowing local communities to access key information and become partners in their own progress.

Where do donors fit in? In situations where development programs are negotiated bilaterally between governments and donors without citizen input into the policy agenda, there is the ever-present danger of development turning into an elite affair that holds little meaning for local communities. Donors should never act in ways that undermine the primary responsibility of governments to be responsive and accountable to their citizens. Open Development makes this clear and recognizes that local knowledge matters and that citizens have a role to play in setting the development agenda. Donors and development partners should support efforts that enable local people to engage with their governments and encourage governments to share information on budgets, aid and resource allocation with citizens. ONE will contribute to this agenda by continuing to advocate for smarter delivery of aid and greater transparency in relation to budgets and natural resource revenues in developing countries.