There is strong demand for jobs, better economic management, reduced inequality and corruption and such outcome deliverables as health, education and infrastructure.22 Those outcomes require effective governance institutions. In Botswana, for example, the consensual decision-making process in the kgotla (public meeting) regulates the power of the chiefs. PDF African Governance Systems in the Pre and Post-Independence Periods Land privatization is, thus, unworkable in pastoral communities, as communal land ownership would be unworkable in a capitalist economy. Pre-Colonial Period in Ghana | Pre-Colonial Political Systems The nature of governance is central because it determines whether the exercise of authority is viewed as legitimate. Legitimacy based on successful predation and state capture was well known to the Plantagenets and Tudors as well as the Hapsburgs, Medicis, and Romanovs, to say nothing of the Mughal descendants of Genghis Khan.14 In this fifth model of imagined legitimacy, some African leaders operate essentially on patrimonial principles that Vladimir Putin can easily recognize (the Dos Santos era in Angola, the DRC under Mobutu and Kabila, the Eyadema, Bongo, Biya, and Obiang regimes in Togo, Gabon, Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea, respectively).15 Such regimes may seek to perpetuate themselves by positioning wives or sons to inherit power. Since institutional fragmentation is a major obstacle to nation-building and democratization, it is imperative that African countries address it and forge institutional harmony. Large states and those with complex ethnic and geographic featurese.g., the DRC, Nigeria, Uganda, the Sudans, Ethiopiamay be especially prone to such multi-sourced violence. The same factors that hinder nation-building hinder democratization. Another driver of governance trends will be the access enjoyed by youthful and rapidly urbanizing populations to the technologies that are changing the global communications space. This layer of institutions is the subject of inquiry of this article. The third section deals with the post-colonial period and discusses some problems associated with African administration. Within this spectrum, some eight types of leadership structures can be identified. Ousted royals such as Haile Selassie (Ethiopia) and King Idriss (Libya) may be replaced by self-anointed secular rulers who behave as if they were kings until they, in turn, get overthrown. On the other hand, weak or destructive governance is sometimes the source of conflicts in the first place. One is that the leaders of the postcolonial state saw traditional institutions and their leadership as archaic vestiges of the past that no longer had a place in Africas modern system of governance. In many cases, the invented chieftaincies were unsuccessful in displacing the consensus-based governance structures (Gartrell, 1983; Uwazie, 1994). A Sociology of Education for Africa . It assigned them new roles while stripping away some of their traditional roles. by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. Africas geopolitical environment is shaped by Africans to a considerable degree. An alternative strategy of bringing about institutional harmony would be to transform the traditional economic systems into an exchange-based economy that would be compatible with the formal institutions of the state. They dispense justice, resolve conflicts, and enforce contracts, even though such services are conducted in different ways in different authority systems. The government is undertaking a review of local government, which includes a commitment to introduce direct election of metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs). The Sultanes of Somalia are examples of this category and the community has specific criteria as to who is qualified to be a chief (Ahmed, 2017). 2. Nation, Tribe and Ethnic Group in Africa | Cultural Survival Decision making is generally participatory and often consensus-based. All the characteristic features of a traditional society are, for obvious reasons, reflected in the education system. The initial constitutions and legal systems were derived from the terminal colonial era. Political and economic inclusion is the companion requirement for effective and legitimate governance. Political leaders everywhere face competing demands in this regard. The link between conflict and governance is a two-way street. Cookie Settings. This is done through the enforcement agencies such as the police force. . The problems that face African governments are universal. African Governance: Challenges and Their Implications. Its ability to influence policy is limited in large part because of its institutional detachment from the state and because of its poverty and lack of capacity to participate in the political process. The Alafin as the political head of the empire was . Additionally, the transaction costs for services provided by the traditional institutions are much lower than the services provided by the state. Among the attributes of the traditional system with such potential is the systems transparent and participatory process of resolving conflicts, which takes place in open public meetings. However, they do not have custodianship of land and they generally do not dispense justice on their own. Relatively unfettered access to the internet via smart phones and laptops brings informationand hence potential powerto individuals and groups about all kinds of things: e.g., market prices, the views of relatives in the diaspora, conditions in the country next door, and the self-enrichment of corrupt officials. These events point to extreme state fragility and a loss of sovereign control over violence in the 11 affected countries, led by Nigeria, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic (CAR). This study notes that in 2007 Africa saw 12 conflicts in 10 countries. While empirical data are rather scanty, indications are that the traditional judicial system serves the overwhelming majority of rural communities (Mengisteab & Hagg, 2017). A Long Journey: The Bantu Migrations. In the postcolonial era, their roles changed again. The cases of Nigeria, Kenya, and South Sudan suggest that each case must be assessed on its own merits. Beyond such macro factors, several less obvious variables seem important to the political and economic governance future of the region. Changes in economic and political systems trigger the need for new institutional systems to manage the new economic and political systems, while endurance of economic and political systems foster durability of existing institutional systems. Although much has been lost in the shadows and fogs of a time before people created written accounts, historians . African conflict trends point to a complex picture, made more so by the differing methodologies used by different research groups. An analytical study and impact of colonialism on pre-colonial centralized and decentralized African Traditional and Political Systems. 1. The parallel institutional systems often complement each other in the continents contemporary governance. This brief overview of conflict in Africa signals the severity of the security challenges to African governance, especially in those sub-regions that feature persistent and recurrent outbreaks of violence. Violating customary property rights, especially land takings, without adequate compensation impedes institutional reconciliation by impoverishing rather than transforming communities operating in the traditional economic system. Both can be identified as forms of governance. Afrocentrism | Definition, Examples, History, Beliefs, & Facts African Politics: A Very Short Introduction explores how politics is practised on the African continent, providing an overview of the different states and their systems. With the dawn of colonialism in Africa, the traditional African government was sys-tematically weakened, and the strong and influential bond between traditional lead- . PDF The Local Government System in Ghana - Clgf Legal norms are an integral part of the discussion about inclusivity since they affect every aspect of economic and personal life; this poses a critical question over whether individual rights or group rights take precedence in the normative hierarchy. Communities like the Abagusii, Ameru, Akamba, Mijikenda, and Agikuyu in Kenya had this system of government. When a seemingly brittle regime reaches the end of its life, it becomes clear that the state-society gap is really a regime-society gap; the state withers and its institutions become hollow shells that serve mainly to extract rents. Invented chiefs and state-paid elders: These were chiefs imposed by the colonial state on decentralized communities without centralized authority systems. The participatory and consensus-based system of conflict resolution can also govern inter-party politics and curtail the frequent post-election conflicts that erupt in many African countries. The US system has survived four years of a norm-busting president by the skin of its teeth - which areas need most urgent attention? America's flawed democracy: the five key areas where it - The Guardian Another measure is recognition of customary law and traditional judicial systems by the state. . PDF NNSO OKAF, Ph.D. (a.k.a. OKEREAFEZEKE) The pre-colonial system in Yoruba can be described to be democratic because of the inclusion of the principle of checks and balances that had been introduced in the system of administration. Posted: 12 May 2011. Unlike the laws of the state, traditional institutions rarely have the coercive powers to enforce their customary laws. In the centralized systems also, traditional leaders of various titles were reduced to chiefs and the colonial state modified notably the relations between the chiefs and their communities by making the chiefs accountable to the colonial state rather than to their communities (Coplan & Quinlan, 1997). The same source concluded that 7 out of the 12 worst scores for political rights and civil liberties are African.11 As noted, the reasons vary: patrimonialism gone wrong (the big man problem), extreme state fragility and endemic conflict risks, the perverse mobilization of ethnicity by weak or threatened leaders. There are also various arguments in the literature against traditional institutions.2 One argument is that chieftaincy impedes the pace of development as it reduces the relevance of the state in the area of social services (Tom Mboya in Osaghae, 1989). On the one hand, they recognize the need for strong, responsive state institutions; weak, fragile states do not lead to good governance. The kings and chiefs of Angola and Asante, for example, allowed European merchants to send their representatives to their courts. The council of elders, religious leaders, and administrative staff of the chiefs exercise checks on the power of the leaders and keep them accountable (Beattie, 1967; Busia, 1968; Coplan & Quinlan, 1997; Jones, 1983; Osaghae, 1989). In many cases European or Islamic legal traditions have replaced or significantly modified traditional African ones. Features Of Traditional Government Administration | Bartleby However, they are not merely customs and norms; rather they are systems of governance, which were formal in precolonial times and continue to exist in a semiformal manner in some countries and in an informal manner in others. Yet, the traditional judicial system in most cases operates outside of the states institutional framework. However, three countries, Botswana, Somaliland, and South Africa, have undertaken differing measures with varying levels of success. example of a traditional African political system. . Paramount chieftaincy as a system of local government African states, along with Asian, Middle Eastern, and even European governments, have all been affected.
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