Seventeen African countries have been invited by US President Joe Biden to join nearly 100 others invited for one virtual “Democracy Summit” will take place this week. A second summit, personally, is planned for next year.
There are three issues on the agenda: defense against authoritarianism; tackle and fight corruption; and promote respect for human rights.
Africans have a lot to contribute. It is also an opportunity for them to promote their interests – as individual countries as well as collectively.
The United States claims to have already consulted widely with non-state actors. This means that the views of African media, researchers and other stakeholders should be taken into account.
Taken together, the summit’s three topics all call for greater specificity plus realistic action plans and resources. Africa can – and must – be seen as offering important and affordable opportunities to design, test and scale collective efforts. On each of the three broad topics, they can make important contributions.
The question of democracy
It remains an American bureaucratic mystery how values selected invited. Of the 113 selected countries, an estimated 69% considered of a Carnegie Endowment study for being “free”; 28% are “Partly free” and 3% “Not free”.
Among the African invited are Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Even the host country America has been considered in recent global surveys of Freedom House and the Swedish NGO International IDEA to have shown authoritarian qualities. Its democracy ranking has been lowered. Europe for fighters with illiberalism.
At the same time, all 54 member states of the African Union ratified an inclusive constitutive law that implicitly condemns authoritarianism and explicitly affirms democratic goals. These are given operational significance with the subsequent adoption of the African Charter for Democracy, Elections and Governance.
All African governments are required to hold periodic elections, subject to international observation. These are deficient in many ways. Yet they are a practical expression of a new norm in intra-African relations: “the principle of non-indifference”. This refers to the commitment to no longer tolerate internal abuses of domestic power. The pro-democracy practice has been famous as a pioneer globally by International IDEA.
In addition to formal commitments to defend against authoritarianism, there are also sustained popular support for democracy across the continent. This is despite many often volatile democratic shortcomings.
Africans can also constructively disagree with the US host and engage others in two major issues related to tensions between illiberal and liberal democracies.
One is to seek constructive ways of engaging all other nations, even in only limited ways, rather than trying to freeze or punish them. Today, virtually all nations claim to be democratic, even the most autocratic. If the 2022 summit is to be credible, better ways must be found than for the United States alone to decide who will participate and how.
A second issue where Africans can lead by example is their pragmatic but principled commitment to China. For African countries, the goal is a productive relationship with both China and the West. This was pointed out by Cyril Ramaphosa as the lone African guest in the end G7 summit.
This would promote Africa’s development and reduce tensions between China and the United States.
It is a result that deserves urgent attention from the other participants in the Democracy Summit.
The issue of corruption
Corruption is a pervasive problem throughout Africa. It is supported by the participation, or at least lax regulations, of many non-African governments that will attend the summit, especially the United States.
This was one key conclusion of the High Level Panel on Illegal Financial Flows from Africa, chaired by Thabo Mbeki and commissioned by the African Union and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. The panel focuses on raising the issue on the agendas of African governments and will meet again in practice on 12 December.
New revelations from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, on FinCEN files and Pandora Papers show the extent and extent of corrupt practices that deprive African countries of important tax revenues. The founding chairman of the non-governmental organization Global Financial Integrity, Raymond W Baker, and a member of the high-level panel, told me in an email that:
Given Africa’s poverty and inequality, exacerbated by covid-19 and climate change, the pressure on the necessary political determination and institutional capacity to address this issue must and can become a global priority.
Last week, the US government released a new one Strategy to combat corruption. It could serve as a reference for the African High Level Panel to test the United States’ determination to work with Africans in this important area.
The issue of human rights
In this, too, Africa can make a decisive global contribution.
Human rights are not just a moral imperative. In Africa’s international relations, the emphasis is pragmatic. “Today’s human rights abuses are tomorrow’s refugees” has become a politically prominent cliché in a continent struggling to mitigate and prevent forced migration and all human suffering and instability, nationally and regionally, the phrase suggests.
Violations of human rights are “early warning signs” of conflicts that have given political impetus to the “principle of indifference”. Preventing unregulated mass migrations to the European countries that make up the largest contingent – 39 – invited to the Democracy Summit should ensure a captivated audience for African ideas about what can and should be done in collaboration to solve this problem.
In fact, most of the forced migration takes place among African countries. But ways and means to tackle this important human rights problem have global consequences, with Africa avant-garde.
African Agency
African leaders and the public can – and must – set their own agendas on the issues to be addressed at the summit. This is because they have to shoulder the primary responsibility for the issues on the agenda – to defend themselves against authoritarianism, to tackle and fight corruption and to promote respect for human rights – from two perspectives.
First, they must deal with the consequences of these great challenges.
Second, they must implement policies to achieve the objectives of the plans to address them.
The credibility of the African governments is at stake at the summit. This is the opportunity to build mutually beneficial partnerships that can become more inclusive.
At present, richer democracies have not been reliable partners with African nations in their joint fight against the global pandemic. If the summit could not lead to real partnerships with African countries striving to maintain democracy, African countries invited to the 2022 summit would have the right to refuse to participate.
Author: John J Stremlau – Honorary Professor of International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand