247 - "African People Deserve Better:" The Ravages of Kleptocratic Leadership

Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Senegal

            Those were the words of USAID Administrator Samantha Power. She was referring specifically to Zimbabwe, but what she said widely applies now to nearly all of Africa: Corruption rots the innards of numerous places such as Zimbabwe. Gangs kidnap schoolchildren and hold them for ransom in Nigeria. A jihadist militia raids a hotel a few steps away from state house in Somalia. A different set of jihadists attacks almost with impunity in the Sahelian states of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger despite coups that have overthrown elected civilian governments in those same countries. (Niger Saturday asked 648 U.S. troops to leave an anti-insurgency drone base in the north, thus strengthening Niger's ties to Russia.) Two militant fighting groups in the eastern Congo conduct killing sprees and threaten to occupy towns and villages. In Sudan, the senseless and bitter combat between the regular and an upstart army turns one of the continents biggest polities into a massive killing field without hope or purpose. Eight million Sudanese have fled their homes. And in South Africa, lights go out constantly, along with electrical appliances, because of the year-long collapse of the state electrical generating monopoly. And clean water supplies are short, too.  In many African countries, starvation already stalks the door and malnutrition and wasting children abound.  (This newsletter has very recently written about Congo and Sudan, about the wars within Ethiopia, and about near starvation there and perilously in Congo and Sudan.)

Zimbabwe

            Power was bemoaning the fact that President Emmerson Mnangagwa's enduringly kleptocratic regime was systematically still stealing revenues from gold, lithium, ferrochrome, and vanadium mining that should benefit the people of Zimbabwe. Instead, nearly half of all Zimbabweans rely on assistance from the World Food Program to stem starvation while that once wealthy country suffers rampant inflation (this year about 224.4 percent) and has nearly abandoned a worthless local currency, instead using whatever U.S. dollars are available.

            Mnangagwa's government has rigged elections, coerced or imprisoned political opponents, curbed press and other expressive freedoms, and ordered kangaroo courts to deny rights to political parties and outspoken individuals who refuse to toe the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union -- Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) official line and swallow its propaganda.

            Mnangagwa and his associates are also close to Russia and China, obtaining financial backing and intelligence support from both nations. Mnangagwa came to power in 2017 after ousting his boss, the long-running, rampantly corrupt President Robert Mugabe, in a largely bloodless coup.  Mnangagwa promised clean government, prosperity, and an end to corrupt dealings. But none of that has transpired and Zimbabweans are poorer and more repressed than ever before.

            The U.S. recently removed two-decade old sanctions on the Zimbabwean government but continued them on Mnangagwa and the cabal that rules the country. Power's recent commiseration for Zimbabwe's people arose last week when the government detained, interrogated, and deported a team of U.S. contractors who were assessing the state of democracy in the country as part of a regular evaluation of U.S. assistance programs overseas.

            Mnangagwa and his officials accused the contractors of promoting "regime change" and of holding clandestine meetings with opposition politicians. They also claimed that their visas were not in order whereas USAID says that everyone involved had proper clearances and that the authorities had been kept informed before and during the visit.

            At one point, the new Zimbabwe government had hoped to be let in from the cold by Washington so that sanctions could be relaxed and Zimbabwe's prior pariah status upgraded.  But Mnangagwa and his cronies have not stopped repressing their people, interfering with elections, and running an economy designed primarily to benefit themselves.  Until they do so, Power and others will continue to bemoan the consequences of corruption and autocracy in Zimbabwe. And its inhabitants will continue to suffer and go hungry.

Nigeria

            Power's plea also applies easily to Nigeria's 220 million long harassed citizens. Just this month powerful youthful gangs in Kaduna and Sokoto States kidnapped nearly 600 schoolchildren in three widely separated raids on villages and hostels across the two northern states and are holding them for ransom.  One gang wants 1 billion naira, about $628,000, to free the children.

            Elsewhere in northeastern Nigeria, an offshoot of the long insurgent Islamist Boko Haram movement affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS) in West Africa Province last week kidnapped more than 200 children from a boarding school.  Ten years ago, Boko Haram itself took 276 girls from a boarding school in Chibok near the border with Cameroon.  Nearly 100 of those girls are still missing, some of the others having died and the majority having escaped or been released back into mainstream Nigerian society.

            Kidnapping children at gunpoint is a Nigerian industry. The kidnappers want cash to sustain their drug-filled and marauding lives, wives or sex-slaves, and young recruits to bolster their militant ranks. Even among Islamists like Boko Haram, however, ideological considerations are no longer very salient.

            That the security forces of the Nigerian state cannot protect its school children has become increasingly obvious. The battle against Boko Haram, for example, has been in process since at least 2010, at times with assistance from the U.S. and the U.K. The corrupt ways of the Nigerian army are blamed for at least some of the failures to contain Islamists, and now the kidnapping gangs.

            But dysfunctional state governments (as in Kaduna and Bornu) and massive societal failures at the federal level are also responsible.  Inflation is rising and is now said to be 25 percent annually, unemployment is about 40 percent, and an estimated 27 percent of the total population is believed by local and external experts to be food insecure.

            Nigeria is one of the fastest growing countries on earth, with a population estimated by the UN Population Division to be approaching 700 million by the end of the century. What that means now is that the median age of Nigerians is about 19, with masses of 18-34 year old men and women now and for the next five decades possessing incomplete schooling attainments and hardly any formal sector jobs. Youths with no economic prospects in the formal sector naturally turn to informal ways to obtain cash -- kidnapping for ransom is one.

            The failed Nigerian state struggles to attract investors just as it struggles woefully to calm piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, prevent local attacks on petroleum installations in the Oil Rivers delta, counter Free Biafra attempts to rewrite the results of the 1967-1970 civil war,  reduce the internecine very hot conflict between Muslim pastoralists and Christian and animist agriculturalists in the Plateau region north of Abuja, and resist the anomic gangs who prey on hapless schoolchildren.

            President Bola Tinubu's recently elected administration appears almost sclerotic in the face of its many internal challenges. He also has to cope with a national legislature that rejects and hampers many of his new initiatives. Nigeria, despite massive external attention and the energies and remittances of a wealthy and committed diaspora, cannot provide prosperity, hope for a promising future, or fundamental security for the majority of its people.  Nigerian governance merits a complete overhaul, but how? and by whom?

A Little Good News

            Briefly, to banish gloom, international donors have relieved Somalia of $2 billion worth of debt. Senegal will finally hold its national election this Sunday. The government just released two prominent opposition prisoners, Bassirou Diomaye Faye and Ousmane Sonko.  Faye is on the presidential ballot and expected to do well against the ruling party's Prime Minister Amadou Ba, although there are seventeen other presidential candidates. Sonko is content to let Faye, of his same party, contest the poll in his stead.