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281. Corruption Crossroads? Rising Perceptions of Graft Weaken Citizen Trust, Threaten Botswana’s Democratic Standing

Author:
Thomas Isbell and Batlang Seabo
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
Corruption is widely considered one of the greatest impediments to sustainable development in African countries (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, 2016; Bratton & Gyimah-Boadi, 2016). Corruption hinders macro-economic growth by weakening governance structures and diluting the positive effects of investments. At the micro level, corruption can trap the poorest, who are least likely to have alternatives to state provision of services, in a downward spiral (Peiffer & Rose, 2014). Botswana has long been considered one of Africa’s least corrupt countries and top performers in democratic practice and good governance. But while Transparency International’s (2019) Corruption Perceptions Index continues to rank Botswana as best on the continent, other observers have questioned this reputation (Mogalakwe & Nyamnjoh, 2017; Good, 2017). Allegations have focused on, among other things, high-level corruption in military procurement contracts under former President Ian Khama, close ties between members of the ruling party and the agricultural sector, and charges that well-connected suspects are often cleared by the courts (Motlogelwa & Civillini, 2016; Konopo, 2017; Good, 2017; Norad, 2011; Sebudubudu 2014; Gasennelwe, 2018). Recent corruption scandals have reached the highest levels of government, including the alleged looting of the National Petroleum Fund (Kgalemang, 2019; Motshegwa, Mutonono, & Mikazhu, 2019), and are still before courts of law (Shuma, 2020). In this paper we use Afrobarometer survey data to explore citizens’ perceptions of corruption in Botswana. We find that far more people see corruption increasing than decreasing and that perceptions of corruption in the Presidency and Parliament have risen sharply over the past decade. Fewer Batswana approve of how the government is handling the anti-corruption fight, and while many believe ordinary people can help fight corruption, a majority say that people risk retaliation if they report corruption to the authorities. A correlation analysis suggests that perceptions of corruption, especially in the Presidency, are strongly associated with less popular trust in public institutions and less satisfaction with democracy.
Topic:
Corruption, Governance, Democracy, and Citizenship
Political Geography:
Africa and Botswana

282. PP67: COVID-19 in Africa - Vulnerabilities and Assets for an Effective Response

Author:
Robert Mattes, Carolyn Logan, E. Gyimah-Boadi, and George Ellison
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
Not only did the COVID-19 disease arrive on Africa’s shores (and at its airports) later than in Asia, Europe, and North America (Loembé et al., 2020), but for months the numbers of infections and deaths also appeared to remain relatively low. As of early August, the continent had experienced more than 1 million confirmed cases and 23,000 deaths (Africa CDC, 2020), though these figures were increasing rapidly. At this point, the causes behind Africa’s comparatively low initial numbers are not completely clear. One reason may be that early and decisive responses on the part of many African governments prevented the virus from gaining an easy foothold (Beech, Rubin, Kurmanaev, & MacLean, 2020; Hirsch, 2020; Levinson, 2020; Moore, 2020; Loembé et al., 2020). Indeed, according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (2020), 46 African countries took some form of official action – in the form of new legislation or executive orders and decrees – restricting or banning travel and public gatherings, enforcing quarantines, or in some cases imposing full “lockdowns.” But Africa, somewhat paradoxically, may also have benefited from a range of structural factors, such as the continent’s relatively limited international exposure, its relatively low rates of intra- and inter-state air travel (Marbot, 2020), a generally hot and humid climate, relatively lower levels of population density and urbanization (De Waal, 2020; Marbot, 2020), and its substantially younger populations (Binding, 2020). It may have also profited from cultural factors, such as the fact that older people tend to remain with their families, rather than being institutionalized in retirement homes (Marbot, 2020), though this also has consequences for residential density, or that it has a more collectivist, less individualistic culture, which, according to recent research, may make COVID-19 interventions more effective (Frey, Presidente, & Chen, 2020). Yet most public health experts remain wary, and still expect significant further transmission of the virus across the continent, requiring drastic public health responses and interventions, especially where governments eased initial restrictions and lockdowns. Indeed, some officials have expressed concerns that Africa’s low numbers merely reflect very low rates of testing (Sly, 2020) and even, in some countries such as Tanzania, deliberate under-reporting (BBC, 2020). Some press reports have described instances where local reports of death rates bear little relation to official data (MacLean, 2020; York, 2020). These concerns appear well-founded given that community transmission is now present in all African countries and the number of infections increased by 50%, and deaths by 22%, in the last two weeks of July (World Health Organization, 2020). And officials at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have warned that Africa could well become the next epicenter of the pandemic (Loembé et al., 2020). If, as these events suggest, early interventions in African countries successfully erected a wall that kept the virus at bay, albeit temporarily, how well prepared are these countries if and when the virus penetrates their initial defenses? A wealth of Afrobarometer survey data suggests that Africans are especially vulnerable, in part due to lack of access to clean water and adequate health care (Gyimah-Boadi & Logan, 2020a; Logan, Howard, & Gyimah-Boadi, 2020). In this paper, we attempt to take the issue of vulnerability a step further by developing a more fine-grained approach, using insights from public health to examine different dimensions and components of vulnerability (Morrell, 2018). Specifically, we develop three inter-connected indices intended to capture the extent to which Africans might 1) run a heightened “risk of exposure to infection,” 2) face a heightened “susceptibility to illness” (once infected), and 3) face a “lack of resilience” (to recover once they become ill). In addition, a fourth index of “lockdown readiness” estimates the proportion of people who are more (or less) likely to be able to withstand the most severe forms of government health interventions, i.e. lockdowns or “shelter in place” orders, We then demonstrate how cross-country variations in the extent of exposure and susceptibility, and in the degree to which people are prepared for a lockdown, might help us better understand policy choices that African governments have made, and the extent to which these interventions were able to achieve desired reductions in mobility and contact. Finally, we briefly explore some of the soft assets that governments can bring to the table, such as legitimacy and trust, that may help increase compliance with restrictions on mobility, especially in countries we have identified as least able to tolerate lockdowns.
Topic:
Governance, Public Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Africa

283. Africa’s Digital Divide and the Promise of E-learning

Author:
Matthias Krönke
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
According to UNESCO (2020), approximately 1.2 billion students and youth worldwide are affected by school and university closures because of the COVID-19 pandemic. To adjust to these new circumstances, governments must develop innovative solutions to ensure inclusive learning opportunities during this period of unprecedented educational disruption. This is especially true in African countries, where despite recent progress traditional education has faced infrastructural challenges and struggled to develop the human resources necessary to address students’ educational needs (Krönke & Olan’g, 2020; United Nations, 2019; UNESCO Institute of Statistics, 2016. This policy paper uses Afrobarometer survey data to look at digital infrastructure, the availability of digital devices at the household level, and digital literacy among African adults. While rates of digital literacy among children are likely to differ, it is important to understand these dynamics among adults for at least two reasons. First, adults are likely to shape children’s access to and experience with technology. Second, understanding current levels of access to devices and levels of digital literacy among adults provides a baseline against which future assessments can measure progress over time. Survey findings from Afrobarometer Round 7 (2016/2018) show a substantial digital divide both across and within countries, reflected in uneven access to resources such as electricity and unequal access to and use of smartphones and computers. The results suggest that government efforts to redress widespread inequalities need to be increased drastically to avoid the widening of an education gap among their citizens. The paper also discusses the potential benefits of providing smartphones and computers to those who currently do not have access to such devices.
Topic:
Education, Infrastructure, Inequality, Digital Economy, and Digitalization
Political Geography:
Africa

284. Democratic Dividend: The Road to Quality Education in Africa

Author:
Matthias Krönke
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
Education is a powerful tool to fight poverty, enable upward socioeconomic mobility, and empower people to live healthier lives. But while the global adult literacy rate continues to increase, from 81% in 2000 to 86% in 2018 (World Bank, 2019), the challenge of access to quality education remains particularly severe in Africa. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, globally one out of five children aged 6-17 years were not in school; more than half of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, many African pupils attend schools that are inadequately equipped, creating a difficult learning environment. For example, more than half of the schools in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to basic drinking water, handwashing facilities, the Internet, or computers (United Nations, 2019). COVID-19 may exacerbate these challenges as pupils lose school time, unequal access to online learning heightens inequalities, and health care and social-safety costs and economic losses put pressure on limited resources. Africans are aware of education challenges. Across 34 African countries surveyed by Afrobarometer between late 2016 and late 2018, one in five respondents (21%) cited education as one of the most important problems their governments should address, placing it among citizens’ top five priorities (Coulibaly, Silwé, & Logan, 2018). Not surprisingly, younger people placed substantially greater emphasis on education than their elders. At a global level, the United Nations (UN) has highlighted the importance of quality education by including it in its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG 4 calls for governments to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” To this end, the UN outlines specific targets to be achieved by 2030, including ensuring that “all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy.” An important step toward this goal is that by 2030, all girls and boys should be able to “complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education” (United Nations, 2019). Many African governments have made important commitments to universal education. Of the 34 countries surveyed by Afrobarometer in 2016/2018, 33 have made school attendance compulsory (for periods ranging from five to 11 years), and 33 provide free primary education. (See Appendix Table A.2 for details.) Many governments also commit substantial portions of their yearly budgets to improving education. For example, in Côte d’Ivoire, eSwatini, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe, more than 25% of total government expenditures go to education (World Bank, 2020). Afrobarometer surveys point to slow but steady progress as fewer Africans go without formal education and more attend school beyond the primary grades. But in some countries, two-thirds of adults still have no formal schooling, and significant gender gaps continue to disadvantage girls and women. Overall, just a slim majority of Africans think their government is doing a good job on meeting educational needs. Factors that contribute to these evaluations include whether citizens find it easy to obtain school services and whether they think schools are transparent about their budgets and responsive to reports of teacher misconduct. More fundamentally, our analysis finds that more democratic countries are seen as better able to provide public education. Citizens are more likely to be satisfied with government performance on education if immediate avenues of transparency and accountability at the school level are embedded in a broader political system that encourages these qualities.
Topic:
Education, Poverty, Democracy, and Inequality
Political Geography:
Africa

285. Lived Poverty on the Rise: Decade of Living-Standard Gains Ends in Africa

Author:
Robert Mattes
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
Economic destitution – whether measured as the frequency with which people go without basic necessities or as the proportion of people who live on less than $1.90 a day – declined steadily in Africa between 2005 and 2015. However, the findings of Afrobarometer Round 7 surveys, conducted in 34 African countries between late 2016 and late 2018, demonstrate that improvements in living standards have come to a halt and “lived poverty” is once again on the rise. To prevent squandering hard-won gains in Africans’ living standards, the data point to the necessity of a renewed commitment by citizens, governments, and international donors to defending democracy and expanding service-delivery infrastructure. Key findings Between 2005 and 2015, Afrobarometer surveys tracked a steady improvement in the living conditions of the average African. Measured as the frequency with which people go without a basket of basic necessities (food, clean water, health care, heating fuel, and cash income), “lived poverty” dropped in a sustained fashion over this period – a trend matched by consumption-based estimates of poverty by the World Bank. The most recent Afrobarometer surveys, however, suggest that Africa is in danger of squandering these gains in living standards. While the citizens of most African countries are still doing better than they were in 2005/2006, deprivation of basic necessities – captured by our Lived Poverty Index – has increased in about half of surveyed countries since 2015. The trend is similar for “severe lived poverty,” the extent to which people experience frequent shortages of basic necessities. Lived poverty varies widely across the continent. At one extreme, people rarely experience deprivation in Mauritius. At the other, the average person went without several basic necessities several times in the preceding year in Guinea and Gabon. In general, lived poverty is highest in Central and West Africa, and lowest in North Africa. Lived poverty also varies widely within societies. Reflecting the legacies of the “urban bias” of successive post-independence governments, rural residents continue to endure lived poverty far more frequently than those who live in suburbs and cities. A multilevel, multivariate regression analysis of more than 40,000 respondents across Africa reveals that people who live in urban areas, those who have higher levels of education, and those who have a job (especially in a middle-class occupation) are less likely to live in poverty, as are younger people and men. But besides personal characteristics, we locate even more important factors at the level of government and the state. First, Africans who live in countries with longer experiences of democratic government are less likely to live in poverty. Second, people who live in communities where the state has installed key development infrastructure such as paved roads, electricity grids, and piped-water systems are less likely to go without basic necessities. Indeed, the combined efforts of African governments and international donors in building development infrastructure, especially in rural areas, appears to have played a major role in bringing down levels of poverty – at least until recently.
Topic:
Poverty, Infrastructure, Inequality, and Local
Political Geography:
Africa

286. Four scenarios for electoral violence: Policy Brief the 2020 Ivorian Presidential and Parliamentary elections

Author:
Kars de Bruijne
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
Presidential and parliamentary elections in Cote d’Ivoire are scheduled for October 31, 2020. The past months have seen serious acts of violence during the campaign. As more violence is expected, the central question is where this violence is taking and will be taking place and which conditions are encouraging it. This policy brief explores the election violence literature and derives four scenarios to explaining and show which of Cote d'Ivoire's 31 regions will be affected for what reasons by electoral violence. Exploration of violence data highlights that presently, electoral violence is highest in competitive areas. This implies that the incumbent and opposition use violence in ‘swing’ areas and areas where they need to poach substantial number of votes from the opponent.
Topic:
Elections, Domestic Politics, Violence, and Presidential Elections
Political Geography:
Africa and Côte d'Ivoire

287. Towards mutually beneficial CRU Policy Brief EU-West African migration cooperation? Assessing EU policy trends and their implications for migration cooperation

Author:
Johannes Claes, Leonie Jegen, and Omar N. Cham
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
The political stakes of migration cooperation at domestic, regional and international levels are crucial when assessing the potential of West African states to establish mutually beneficial relations. European–West African migration cooperation is unlikely to be mutually beneficial without consideration of such local realities, and political and social stakes. This policy brief assesses the extent to which policy trends in the EU external migration governance framework, as put forward in the New Pact on Migration and Asylum and the new EU Multiannual Financial Framework for 2021-2027, match the Union’s commitment to building a mutually beneficial partnership with third countries. This question will be assessed by drawing on EU migration cooperation with West African states. It will show that the rhetoric of a mutually beneficial relationship and a paradigm shift is not demonstrated in the actual policy content.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Migration, and European Union
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and West Africa

288. German Priorities for Africa during Its Presidency of the EU Council

Author:
Bram Dijkstra and Marta Martinelli
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
2020 is a pivotal year for EU-Africa relations. Germany’s presidency of the EU Council provides an opportunity to address structural challenges—such as health care infrastructure, food provision, and managing the refugee and migration crises—revealed by the current COVID-19 crisis. The policy brief details Germany’s ambitions to foster a new partnership with Africa and offers recommendations in three priority areas: health care policy, economic development, and democratic governance.
Topic:
Agriculture, Diplomacy, Migration, Food, Health Care Policy, Refugees, Refugee Crisis, and Economic Development
Political Geography:
Africa and Germany

289. Starting Young to Prevent Violence Against Women

Author:
Sexual Violence Research Initiative
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Sexual Violence Research Initiative
Abstract:
More than 50 percent of children have experienced some form of sexual, physical or emotional abuse or neglect in their lifetime. The wide-ranging and lifelong consequences of witnessing or experiencing violence in childhood can be profound.1 Individuals exposed to childhood violence, including child sexual abuse, physical abuse and harm, or witnessing the abuse of their mothers, are at greater risk of becoming perpetrators or victims as adults. Through our core work and grant-making, the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) is building evidence to help us respond to violence as early as possible and to stop it from continuing. Between 2016 and 2020, we funded several studies on violence against children in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia and other regions (in partnership with the World Bank Group). This research has taught us that services and prevention programmes must start with parents and families, and continue throughout the individual’s life. To be most effective, programmes need to target critical development phases, from pre-conception and conception through early childhood to adolescence. Programmes to prevent violence in the home, including programmes that offer parenting support, are essential. Continuing research into childhood violence, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, is essential. Research can help us to effectively prevent and respond to both violence against women and violence against children, and it is essential for creating policies and practices that really work.
Topic:
Education, Children, Gender Based Violence, and Youth
Political Geography:
Africa, Latin America, North America, and Southeast Asia

290. Risk of Mass Atrocities in Cameroon

Author:
Kyra Fox and Andrea Gittleman
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
Cameroon currently ranks number nine of countries at risk of mass killing in the Simon-Skjodt Center’s Statistical Risk Assessment.1 The situation has deteriorated significantly since 2017, when Cameroon ranked 36th. After Anglophone civilians launched protests in late 2016 alleging marginalization by the Francophone-majority government, state security forces responded violently, allegedly arresting, beating, and shooting demonstrators.2 Clashes ensued, with security forces reportedly killing over 20 people in a 12-day period in largely peaceful protests in September and October 2017.3 Shortly after, Anglophone separatists began fighting for independence for the territory they referred to as Southern Cameroons or Ambazonia. The crisis emerged from the long-standing political grievances of the Anglophone community. Yet today, fighting between the two sides makes it difficult to discern motives. Security forces are reportedly targeting Anglophone civilians accused of supporting separatists. It is unclear to what extent security forces are also targeting the Anglophone linguistic and cultural identity. Meanwhile, armed separatists claiming to represent the Anglophone population are reportedly targeting civilians they perceive as supporting the government. This policy brief provides an overview of the risks of mass atrocities in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions and provides recommendations to the Cameroonian government, armed separatist groups, and international actors to prevent atrocities and protect civilians.
Topic:
Non State Actors, State Violence, Risk, Atrocities, and Atrocity Prevention
Political Geography:
Africa and Cameroon