 Welcome to the fourth session of the day, which will be an important topic at the depth in past in Africa, unlocking development potential. So before I will introduce our distinguished panelist, first I will start with Honorable Ambassador Dr. Abed Muchanga, Commissioner for Trade and Industry of the African Union. Mr. Muchanga was the permanent secretary in the Cabinet Office in charge of parliamentary affairs in Zambia. He was also a former ambassador to Ethiopia with extra accreditation to the African Union. He has both at home and a broad deal with issue broadly related to international economic policy, analysis and implementation as well as regional integration, policy analysis and implementation. Honorable Ambassador, I will invite you to join the podium. Thank you very much. Another panelist is Jason Rosario Braganza. I hope I'm pronouncing well your name. Jason is an economist with over 10 years experience working on international development in Africa. Over the past decade, Jason has focused his work on trade and finance for development, domestic resources mobilization, as well as poverty and inequality. He also served as the co-head and program director of tax and international lawyers project, ILAP. Prior to joining ILAP, Jason served as the deputy executive director ahead of research at Task Justice Network Africa. I would like to invite you to join the podium. Then we have Mrs. Chinay, executive director of Task Justice Network Africa. She has worked in the nonprofit sector for over 15 years in Asia and Africa and has expertise in international trade and Africa economic governance with experience in research and coordination policy, advocacy and leadership development. Prior to her appointment, she served as the policy research and advocacy manager at TGNA having joined in 2021. I would like to join the podium. Before starting our conversation, I would like to quickly set the scene. At the end today, we gathered to confront one of the most pressing issues in Africa, Africa's depth challenge. Africa is a continent of 54 countries with unparalleled beauty, diversity and resilience, but the continent also is at a crossroad. Africa, the horizon depth services in Africa and the squeezing, the financial squeeze is pushing many African countries away from sustainable development. According to African Development Bank, in this year 2024, African country will pay 74 billion in depth service compared to 17 billion in 2010, meaning that many resources are being used to pay debt. Many African countries spend more on depth services than education or health, meaning that we are compromising our long-run development. So in 2023, as of November 2023, about 21 African countries were in depth distress or high risk of depth distress. So behind these figures, we have the story of mixed opportunities, mixed growth opportunities and the perpetuation of poverty. As today we came together not only to acknowledge the gravity of debt issue in Africa, but also chart the path forward. So with my panelists, distinguished panelists, which are already here, together we will explore the underlying causes of African depth and the solution to address Africa's depth challenge. The road ahead may be fruit with obstacle, but with courage and collaboration we can pave a way for a brighter future for Africa. So without further ado, let us start our conversation. So my first question here that we go to Ambassador Muchanga. In about seven minutes, I would like you to tell us exactly the problem. What is exactly the problem? We talk about debt issue in Africa. What is give us some overview of the debt problem in Africa and what the EU has been doing, how the EU has taken the leadership in addressing this issue. Thank you. Thank you very much moderator and I would like to thank the US Institute for Peace for inviting us to the video this afternoon and congratulate you together with our colleagues doing with peace in Africa for organizing this event. We are very very happy to be here. Before I answer the question, just two points. The first point is that when we are dealing at the level of the African Indian, we take of 55 African Indian member states that includes the Sahara Republic. That is the first point. The second point is that I have been very very bad at marketing myself. Way back I was appointed as commissioner for trade and industry and one of my key deliveries was the African continent of Ritesh Daria and since then the title for commissioner for trade and industry has started. I have tried to get rid of it, it has started. My current title because in 2021 we brought together two departments so my current title is commissioner for economic development, trade, tourism, industry and minerals. So it is because of the issue of economic development that I am here because economic development actually encompasses three portfolios, the finance ministry, the economic planning ministry and the central banks. We deal with all those issues in that portfolio. Having said that Africa has gone through a number of debt crisis situations and actually all of them have been due to the structure of Africa's economy. Way back in 1974 there was a huge surge in the price of oil and quite a number of institutions including the IMF and World Bank thought it was a short term cyclical phenomenon. So a lot of our countries started borrowing in response to that but beneath that there was also a major transformation in the global economy. The pace of industrialization in the developed countries was not moving that dynamically and therefore the demand for commodities was going down except the oil and as a result of that commodity crunch a lot of countries found themselves in very severe debt situations and they were borrowing from official creditors and also borrowing from the banks and out of that was born the London Club, the Paris Club was already there and at that time in the 1990s I was a young diplomat in New York with a Zambian mission there. We started negotiating advocating for debt forgiveness and eventually it was agreed upon to come up with the Halindated Poor Countries Initiative, HIPIC and the countries which qualified were able to see debt destruction underway and there was massive debt forgiveness arrangements some as much as 60 percent and now when that was done one of the impacts was that there was not going to be any major support from the banks and the official creditors so the response was go to the bond market and 2020 we have the COVID-19 pandemic and of course during that time the process of borrowing from the bond market was already going on and the term limits one of the consideration was that the debts must be paid within 10 to sometimes 7 to 10 years and when the pandemic hit because of the law of fiscal space they found themselves in our countries in debt situations you have given the figures and you have given the countries affected so that's where we are one of the first steps we took was to appoint a senior advisor on debt management so work is underway now to come up with a debt monitoring mechanism through that senior advisor so that we know the debt situation the characteristics of the debt in each and every africanik country then we also recognize that to solve the debt we need this trust your transformation so one of the key programs wherever is the key a strategy from work on key actions to achieve inclusive growth and sustainable development across africa and this is aimed at positioning our countries of africa to grow at 7 to 10 per cent per anam that's the first one the second one is to come up with a strategy on export development and export devastation so that we move away from a production and export of commodities to manufacture the goods and the third one is to establish a single african market the african continent of fritidia and move as soon as possible towards a common market or custom union so a readiness assessment is there so if we achieve export devastation, high risk of economic growth and create a larger market space would be able to really come up with a base for generation of domestic revenues and with respect to domestic revenues we also have a program working with the african institutions only trying to build the capacities of our member states means to finance central banks the tax administration to promote domestic resource mobilization this is what we are doing our end here i think it's not more than seven minutes thank you thank you very much uh honorable ambassador i like that you talk about uh structural transformation it's one of the solution we will get there because i think african countries need to transform the economy and when you look at uh in the year 2024-2016 the oil price oil price shock affect push many countries into a debt uh budget deficit increase because their revenue depend largely on uh oil export so there is need to transform african economy but this is a short term solution we need to find a this is long term solution and we need to find a short term solution because we can with we can transform african economies overnight so our term to uh jason uh you will build on what uh ambassador has said and tell us how did you get here how did you get here what are the underlying causes of african uh visual cycle of indebtedness thank you uh thank you very much mr moderator and let me stand on the protocol that has been laid by the ambassador but also to maybe take one step back in the analysis of the problem that the continent faces on many occasions uh young economists who study in school university masters and so on often are given the 1970s as the starting point for the structural problems that affected the continent but i wish for us to go back maybe 50 60 70 maybe even 100 years before the 1970s and there's this small matter called colonialism that is often omitted in the in the in the history books in the economic textbooks when we are talking about the nature and manner in which our economies have come to be structured the manner and in which our production sectors have been uh limited to the extraction of raw materials for the export indeed primarily up until this day the primary dominating theory or model of development for the continent is to extract raw materials and to feed uh medium and uh final finished goods sectors in in the global north primarily to feed consumption in the global north not on the continent and so within that ecosystem or that eco chamber that we are currently operating finds ourselves that we're not a static continent we have continued to grow as a population we have continued to demand services from our governments but one cannot do that if all you're exporting is coffee beans or koko or kopa or and i use this because when i was in school in Nairobi primary school our teacher taught us that the main exports from Kenya were coffee tea and flowers i'm not so old but my children who are in school today are being taught that Kenya's major exports are coffee tea and flowers and so you can see that there is a big problem as to why then our debt crisis on the continent is not only structural it's systemic it is sustainable because they've managed to sustain us at this very low level of production but it is also deliberate it is not by mistake it is by design the system that has been designed has been done so in a way to keep us at this very low level of production and value the second point is to do with the way power asymmetries affect the ability of our continent to negotiate in a coherent and coordinated manner debt contracts taking of loans is a relationship between a lender and a borrower like friends and partners in the global north they are usually very well coordinated and coherent in what they want we on the other hand somehow have not managed to properly get that we're getting there but we've not yet managed together particularly when it comes to issues of debt negotiations we did it successfully during i think hipik the mdr i when you know african governments together with african citizens came together and we said this was enough we can't pay we will not pay and i think we are gradually getting to that sort of situation but what is needed is a very important coherent and coordinated approach by the continent and i commend here commissioner ambassador for for the commission they have to save yes for the appointment of the special advisor and and pushing for this africa debt monitoring mechanism because this is going to be a game changer in how negotiations are conducted and how analysis is done about the debt situation on the continent and lastly because i know we have very limited time we must appreciate that our creditor landscape has changed dramatically this is to say that you know our reliance or dependence on bilateral lending has decreased significantly we have also seen a gradual reduction in multilateral lending and an upsurge in private commercial borrowing as well as non-traditional lenders now some people may say that is an indication of how attractive the the continent is to investors to lenders but essentially lenders always have no matter which category you place them in they have one thing in mind is return on their investment they don't care whether you have a million or a billion people living in poverty they do not care if your children don't go to school they do not care if women are marginalized from the economic and productive sector their job is to give you money and to get it back at return because they are shareholders at the end of the day when they're having their annual general meetings need to see a dividend a positive dividend when they're having those meetings and i think this is a very important dimension in what has perpetuated the current debt crisis on the continent is that our inability to grow and develop our industries and and domestic production has forced many african governments today to prioritize creditors to prioritize lenders at the expense of african citizens the policy advice that we are receiving primarily from the international financial institutions the world bank and imf are actually perpetuating and deepening this crisis that we are currently facing and so this is these are some of the few uh both political economy analysis economic structural matters and social dimensions in terms of power that have contributed and continue to exacerbate the the debt crisis that we are facing on the continent at present thank you thank you very much jason for your analysis and remarks also like the ambassador you mentioned the lack of economy diversification it's a problem but you also blame colonization even though attended after 60 years we should stop talking about colonization and take our destiny destiny in hands and you talk about the private creditor yes the composition of african debt structure has changed which increasing private creditors but this also can be concerning because when there is a debt crisis it is very difficult to get a deal with private creditors as you say you know they are they are they are no philanthropic they are there to make profit so that's also very important thank you for that and uh i will move to mrs chennai i hope i'm pronouncing well you live yes so after an overview of the causes of the visual cycle of indebtence in africa i will turn to you to ask you what african countries the affected countries can do domestically to ease their debt challenge to increase more fiscal space for development spending because currently many african countries instead of defaulting on their debt defaulting on their obligation to the future generation so what can be done to create fiscal space create more revenue to spend on development thank you for that question and it's it's a very important question within the context of the discussion on on debt so as mentioned i work for an institution called tax justice network africa and our major preoccupation is around how how to support the work of african countries to raise domestic resources and as you can imagine domestic revenue mobilization is the other side of the coin when talking about debt and how we got there so within the african continent when we're thinking about domestic resource mobilization um the primary number that we look at is the tax to gdp ratio so on the continent um on average we have a tax to gdp ratio of about 15 percent what does that mean contextually compared to all other regions in the world we have the least tax to gdp ratio um in latin america it ranges between 20 percent 25 percent um and then specifically within the oecd the european union western countries it gets to as high as about 30 percent so contextually within the african continent we are raising almost half of the amount of money that we could be raising when compared to to other regions so what does this mean there is a lot of room for growth as far as this is concerned um and so when thinking about domestic resource mobilization at tjna we think about a couple of things firstly it's important for um our governments to be able to raise more revenue and and how do they do that there's a number of things that come into play first and foremost to what extent do we have the capacity to do so at national level um and so this looks at for example our revenue administrations in a lot of african countries these are insufficiently resourced and so there's there's work that needs to be done to ensure that we have revenue authorities that can do this um it also speaks to some of the legislation that we have um the extent to which we have insufficient legislation at the national level means that there are various multinational corporations high net worth individuals that are able to exploit these loopholes and essentially not play the apart as far as contributing to the national purse is concerned um also what's really important and this is to pick up from what um the ambassador raised we have economies that are also very largely informal um we have economies um that are not as industrialized as they should be um and so that also limits the extent to which we're able to raise revenue from our economies to that extent there's a lot of work that needs to be done um to promote structural transformation there's a lot of work that needs to be done to create value addition within our group and within our borders to maximize the amount of revenue that we can mobilize at domestic level so there's a whole host of different elements that contribute to the domestic resource mobilization question um and then over and above that um when we're talking about domestic resource mobilization and an important element that needs to be part of the conversation is the how um who carries the burden of of contributing to the national purse unfortunately in many african countries we tend to find that we have regressive tax systems we tend to find that particularly multinational corporations high net worth individuals have lower effective tax rates um than the average citizen um then for example SMEs etc and these are all issues that need to be tackled to ensure one of the things that we always say at TJNA that those who earn the most pay the most that we have vertical equity um when it comes to contributing to the purse so so these are all elements at national level that need to be taken into consideration the extent to which we are unable to raise resources is the extent to which our governments are then forced to look externally in order to fund um their developmental objectives that's why we have found some of our governments tend to go to external markets to to to raise the revenue that they need to then spend on things such as consumption which ideally you should be dependent on your domestic resource mobilization um to cover um and so there is a world in which when thinking about the dead question the tax question is an important element that needs to be part and parcel of this conversation the extent to which we don't prioritize this discussion um is the extent to which we are going to continue to see um a perpetuation of of the dead crisis that we're seeing on on the continent thank you very much thank you very much you talk about domestic revenue mobilization which is very important very important when you agree with you that africa as percentage of gdp africa is less tax revenue that any other region in the world so there's in a room for improvement that uh a recent study by imf for example said that many african countries especially low income countries are far below their tax potential by tax potential i mean the maximum tax revenue that a country can raise given it economic structure and institutions and so with appropriate policies i think we can make progress in that front so i will ask uh the ambassador to add some thought about how domestically we can ease our debt challenge and create fiscal fiscal space very briefly there are two statements i like and one of them is that demography is the destiny uh when you look at the african population you say young population that's the the first thing the second thing is that it's growing right now uh we are about 18 percent of the global population 2050 we are going to be 25 percent 2100 between 38 to 40 percent of the global population so with that we are a huge consumption base we need to leverage that it's very very very important the other statement i like is that uh discipline is the destiny uh if there is no effective governance uh across the nation there's some sort of indiscipline and if that happens what has been highlighted comes about you don't leverage your potential to generate the resources that you need so against this background the task ahead for us is that to ensure that we leverage the resources that we have let us really come up with the key issues that we need to achieve one of them is transformational leadership good governance which establish very strong ministries of finance which i'm able to really drive fiscal police we establish very strong uh central banks which are able to drive monitor police ensure that we don't have excessive levels of inflation and be able to investigate incidences of illicit financial flaws manilandering that is very very very very critical and establish very effective tax administrations that can work together with the the rest of the economy to formalize the informal sector and ensure that uh multinational corporations and the uh other individuals do not elistere the facility outflow of capital from from africa which currently i go to a bank that is about to 60 60 billion dollars annually so we need to promote effective governance for us to do that and we need to leverage the population that we have and of course you can add that the natural sources which are lying we have not added value to all of them thank you thank you very much jason briefly if you can't we can add some ideas yeah thank you very much i think first of all it's it's stopping the leakages elicit financial flaws debt servicing you know account for a significant amount of leakages that are leaving the continent which essentially makes the continent a net creditor actually to the rest of the world and i think that's very important when we are having these kinds of discussions to understand why the continent is perpetually finding itself in in a crisis in crisis mode i think the second point is you know the analysis and the narratives that that we are using this is extremely important because if we are perpetuating the same narratives that are being put out there by our friends in the global north then we too start to believe that the problems are predominantly internally to the continent and i think this is a very important mindset shift that is needed that you know in the session during lunch when the presentation was being made around climate and and who should bear the the biggest brunt nowadays the the narrative is how can africa play its role in the climate resilient or climate transition the question is why should we have a role to play if we are the least polluters and and yet we're the biggest region that is being affected so i think it's very important how language is being used to define and describe the problem and therein also the the the solutions that have been provided the third issue is around global economic and financial governance in terms of power distribution it's very important that african leaders the african union commission continue to fight for more space more voice in in the way global governance is being handled i think for example the inclusion of the african union commission in the g20 has you know within it opportunities i think the group of african countries within the united nations has within it also good opportunities to to move certain reforms and rethinking of of global governance forward the group of 77 also plus china also has a huge scope for for those types of things in terms of moving the african agenda and the african voice um lastly and this is not to sort of brush under the carpet the internal uh challenges governance challenges that we face as a as a continent i think these are well known they are well articulated and well documented you don't need uh for africans to come here and tell you that we have a governance but we we all know that but i think our job is not to perpetuate that but it is to provide a counterbalance that that lack of governance does not happen in isolation there is an ecosystem an eco chamber that facilitates those things from happening and we must not run away from those facts of of our our lived reality and my very last point is really in in the debt crisis as as we try and look for solutions uh that are sustainable that are structural that are systemic we must always remember at the very center of this crisis are human beings i think the demographic dividend that the ambassador is talking about will not be met if we are mortgaging our future it will not be met if we are talking about selling our our so the critical resources that are critical to the west you know it will not are that demographic dividend will not be met if we continue to think too much outwardly and not inwardly about some of these things um and given that we're here that perhaps um as because it that the title is future summit perhaps there is an opportunity to reframe this debt crisis this leakage crisis that we're facing as a continent as an issue of national security and that we have a right to defend ourselves against the vagaries of a very broken international financial system and by national security here i am i am not saying we take up arms i'm just saying perhaps we start thinking about inward protectionist type policies that we have hitherto not been allowed to think about that allows to generate and and develop our own domestic industries that will contribute to the domestic resource mobilization that chennai has referred to allow african countries to protect industries to trade to manufacture and to sell to this wonderful market that's being created through the continent of free trade area so those are the few ideas and options that we can think about um as we move forward but reframing you know and reorienting how we think about the problem is also equally important thank you thank you very much uh you highlight or i'm glad that you highlight public financial management uh which is very important in africa improving spending efficiency as the ambassador said and also elicit financial flow and improve good good governance uh no study has showed that public investment efficiency in africa is very low for example if african countries borrow one dollar to invest in infrastructure 60 cent go to infrastructure and 40 cent is wasted in corruption and poor selection of project so this is an area that we need to work if you want to address create more fiscal crisis in africa because if the money is well spending then well spent then we can generate more revenue to pay back the debt and also invest in investment so that good governance and address corruption issue i'm glad that you mentioned that also elicit financial flow recently we are currently doing a study on mozambik and we we realize that about between 2010 and 2014 about 10 percent of government revenue left the country elicitly imagine a country that highly rely on foreign uh on donors 50 percent of the budget uh from donors and 10 percent of the revenue go outside you know so this is a problem so domestically there's something we need to do to address this debt crisis so now i will move to the international community and i will direct my question to chine what the international community the broad international community can do to help africa address this debt challenge people are talking about the reform of global financial architecture and also the g20 common framework for debt treatment all those issues and debt relief what the international community can do to help africa um thank you for that question i i think my my short response to that question is reform the global international financial architecture um and and the the reason i say that is is this you are indeed correct they they are a growing number of calls from the global south to reform the global financial architecture so we've we saw this with the bridge town initiative um we saw this with india's g20 presidency um we saw this with the africa climate fund summit and then earlier this year at the au summit we saw the three heads of state from gana kenya um as well as zambia call for the same so there there is an increased demand from the global south global south to reform um the international financial architecture um why is this important i i know you mentioned earlier uh mr moderator that i think there was some conversations about you know we need to set aside the effects of colonization and take you know our future into our own hands i i think i think there's an element of truth to that but it's important to recognize that we are still today living in the living the repercussions um of colonization um the current global international financial architecture we have today is one that was established in the 1930s 1940s before many african countries had even gained independence and so what it means is that we have an international financial architecture that was established without taking into consideration the needs the priorities the concerns of developing countries of african countries and because they weren't at the table and able to effectively communicate this we have an international architecture that does not um as i mentioned take into consideration and is actually biased and skewed in favor of developed countries and so when we are thinking about the bigger international financial architecture conversation this needs to be the underpinning of of our discussions um and so what are some of the things that need that need to be done within the tax base jason alluded to this there's a discussion to shift where the global rulemaking on international tax happens currently it is situated at the OECD where we have the 38 richest countries um discussing these global tax rules 50 percent of african countries do not participate in that conversation and the african countries that do participate in those conversations have have argued that the rate at which those conversations happen the the the specialization the resources required to meaningfully contribute to those conversations doesn't take into consideration their specific context and so there's a shift now for that conversation to move from the OECD to the united nations where one country can have one vote and if you take a look at the countries that are leading this charge it is the african group this is reflective of the discontent that exists at present with regard to the international financial architecture so the number one thing that i would say in response to your question mr moderator around the international system and what we need to do it has to be this we need to take a look at the very system within which we are existing because at the end of the day unless we address the gaps the loopholes that exist at the international level we are undermining the national level the domestic level work that we are putting in place when when you think about the international reform agenda there's a couple of things that have been flagged by all of these different heads of state that are talking about the sort of way in which we need to change it the first call that they that they make for is increased representation right so there's a there's a demand there's a call for increased representation in international financial architecture conversation and so this looks like the what was just mentioned earlier where we have the AU now a part of the G20 this also looks like just just the increased participation at senior level within for example the world bank in the IMF so so increased participation of developing countries of african countries in these spaces is important but ultimately as i mentioned what what we need to start to see is a truly inclusive are truly inclusive and democratic spaces where these these conversations can be heard heard the extent to which you can address the representation issue is the extent to which the outcomes that take place in terms of the solutions that are being profit to address the issues that we have at national level are solutions that are cognizant of the context of the countries that essentially are the ones that are in need of the solutions that need to be put forward to address the dead crisis as well as the domestic revenue mobilization question as well so i'll end there thank you very much we realize the importance of the reform of the financial global financial architecture so the ambassador briefly also talked about the G20 common framework for debt treatment briefly very very much before i do that my colleague here called for afrika to consider undertaking some protectionism to create the space for rapid economic transformation we have a grand opportunity without calling it protectionism and this is the african continental fritid area and to make it work as a really strong buffer zone for economy development we are edging member states to move as rapidly as possible to a custom zinion when we have a custom zinion we are going to have a common external tariff with that common external tariff and the population of now 1.4 billion people which is going to grow and a huge reserve of natural sources you are going to see huge inward inflows of investments and that is going to transform the african economy so we are edging member states to say let us transform national sovereignty into collective sovereignty and to achieve the protectionism that you are advocating and that is going to be in line with the provisions of the WTO so i think this is where we are the G20 is most welcome we are already participating very very effectively it has the two tracks the shepa track and the the finance track and altogether they are about 30 work streams and one of them is on the international finance architecture and this is where we are looking at the question of the common framework for debt restructuring what we have noticed is that it has been very very slow on the african countries four countries made use of it chad zambia kina and not kina ethopia and gana those four and in a way chad has managed to do it but zambia was the test case it took about three years before an agreement was reached with regards to ethopia and gana discussions as to going on because for each one of them one of the conditions is that you need an ongoing reform program with the international monetary fund so both the kina with ethopia and gana as to negotiating with the international monetary fund now for a country like zambia which has succeeded one of the key hindrances to rapid achievement of debt restructuring is the formula on the comparable budget of treatment some of the parties feel that they are contributing more than the other parties in debt restructuring so we have advocated really for reform around that area and there has also been some cause to ensure that maybe we have a manual on debt restructuring so that we have a transparent document which can guide the process but there is no agreement on that one but in principle there is agreement that we need to have a second look at the overall framework to ensure that it delivers on time and in full and with the effect in to ensure that it creates conditions for for continued economic transformation growth and inclusive development thank you thank you thank you very much and it is interesting discussion it can be the subject of discussion for the whole day so we are added out of time i will move to the audience and take question i'm sure there are a lot of questions to my panellist so uncle Fon is coming thanks very much uh two comments uh i really enjoyed this discussion commissioner you said demographics is destiny commissioner you said demographics is destiny now i've done a lot of work on demographics um so the um the problem with africa is that if we don't get on top of our of our demographic growth we are not going to grow our ratio of working age people to dependence one of the primary reasons why china grew so rapidly and many other countries is because the ratio of working age people to dependence got to a ratio of 1.7 and above africa only gets to that ratio of 1.7 and above about 2060 so we are three decades away from sorry 2050 uh three decades away from entering a potential demographic dividend so demographics is destiny but it does mean we need to change the contribution that labor can make to growth very important second point you said is you said this demographic what discipline is destiny one of the things that i don't understand is that um mozen beak and many other countries why don't why cannot why can't we not agree on radical transparency that every debt agreement with a state owned enterprise with state is that it must be transparent um so there was just you know two issues that i feel for important thanks very much let's take the second question thank you so much for the presentation my name is daniel um i was really interested in the talk about expanding the tax base uh from madame chanae um in our country uganda right now we are having the traders and shopkeepers are boycotting they have shut down all their shops starting yesterday and today because some of us in the diaspora have been putting pressure on the wild bank and i am able to stop giving loans to our government which are wasted in consumption corruption and so forth so the government is now turning back to the people and trying to collect more revenue but then we're ending up with double triple taxation from the people who have already been paying taxes so my question is are there any case studies or any countries you have worked with what areas have they been able to collect more taxes in africa as you said we have a large informal sector if you look at property taxes some people if you look at the kind of houses we have in rural africa how do you task start tasking uh taxing land and such property so do you have any more specific i know you talked about some of tax policy reform strengthening tax administration combating tax evasion and so forth but are there any other areas where you think the opportunities to expand the tax base in africa because i think that's very important so that we can decrease the demand right now we're going to china among other places to collect more dates which i'm very sure we're not going to be able to pay back and we're going to end up defaulting like our friends in Ghana and some of the other countries which have recently defaulted and had to restructure their debt so what are the areas do you think governments can be able to collect for money of course without causing uprising because there's also a trust deficit between the people and the government they see how our ministers are living in luxury they are sending money offshore and so forth so i think it's a complicated issue but at the same time it's an area where there's a growth opportunity it will be good to see if there are any more areas that you think governments can tap into to expand the tax base thank you sorry there was a hand over here okay um thank you so much moderator and thank you so much to our panelist um jen narunga i um come from Uganda from an urbanization called siatini um my question is um it will in special ambassador and also the other panelist uh that it's true we need structure transformation of our economies if we are to exit debt and i talk about exiting not sustaining we need to exit debt so we need to structurally transform our economies but my question how do we do it because we are grossing over grossing over uh structure transformation why am i saying we are grossing over it because when you look at in africa what the agreements we are signing i will give you just one example um jason you talked about to the flowers and kofi and kinia kinia has just signed an agreement an economic partnership agreement with a european union you know against the entire east african community because we have a commons a common external talif as east africa but kinia has gone ahead to sign an economic partnership agreement with the european union to export flowers and fish okay so so yet ambassador when you say that okay if as africa if we come up with a common external talif we are going to structure transform our economies we are not doing it in east africa how can we do it as africa so and that that's just one example of what we are doing in africa the agreements we are signing the investment treaties we are signing you know you talked about kinia and jason you talked about the outflow of resources that we are net net creditors but we have liberalized our capital account open you know so so there are things which we are doing you know which don't support structure transformation in africa and lastly it's also the issue of financialization of our economy the real economy is now working for the financial sector everywhere they are throwing money at us you know the bonds the colorful bonds the green bonds the blue bonds the orange bonds you know and this is creating more and more indebtedness but those bonds are not going to the real economy so so i think we need to think deeper when we talk about structure transformation thank you very much thank you atin we will respond to the first three questions and the time we have half time we will move to another series of questions so ambasado atin we start from you basically the first observations by doctor yaks sears is in agreement with what i said or i can you say that again if we have to address the issue of the dependence ratio we go back to china and that is the positioning the economy to grow at seven to ten percent per annum of a period of ten to thirty a now related to that is to increase the ratio of investment relative to gdp china at one time went as far as that seven percent of gdp directed at investment so we have to really if we have to demonstrate a transformational leadership across africa first committee that we grow the african economy at seven to ten percent per annum for the next three years 30 years and two agree that we need to commit 35 percent to 40 percent of afrika's gdp towards investment and that is going to lead to the transformation that you are talking about to say we talk about these things we are not achieving them it requires commitment to do it and a good example is china within 30 years they are able to image as the second biggest economy in the world and then some of these issues where a country goes against establish the agreement you have got the east african court of justice something like that so if a member country goes against the provisions to really adhere to a common external tariff you take the country to court that's the only way but as a way of coming out on we should stop thinking the way we used to think let us now say what do we need to do as african to create the future that we need it to do and the answer is that let's harness the resources we have the natural resources the people everything is possible and the countries create a single african market thank you thank you i think the question also were direct to other panelists so jason if you want to add something okay i think i'll pick up on the question that was raised by by jane on structural transformation and i couldn't agree more and i think this is where we we come to have to better understand the dimension of power and politics when it comes to advice that's being given to our governments and to our countries there is a huge power asymmetry in how we we are able to analyze different agreements different scenarios i'm not saying that we don't have the intellectual or knowledge capacity i think the capacity that that perhaps we are sometimes missing is the human numbers i was in a conversation yesterday evening and i was being told that ahead of the wto ministerial in abu dhabi the us had up to 5000 bureaucrats working towards what they were going to discuss in abu dhabi i i don't know i think that would have been the collective amount of african delegates perhaps that went to the yeah and i think and this is not to say that so i said when we talk about capacity the ability to negotiate to understand the implication it's it's not the capacity of lack of knowledge or intellectual capability it is the numbers the share numbers and i think we need to also go back to make working in public service attractive again and that is where we'll start getting the innovative ideas that can take us towards structural transformation because up until now when you when you speak with with bureaucrats in civil service a lot of them are overwhelmed we were talking about the missions just up the train track in new york who are involved in very intense conversations and can i can tell you a lot about this but you've only got one person who is meant to be dealing with up to six or seven different tracks on tax on debt on climate on international development cooperation on systemic issues on architecture reform and this is just one person who in some cases might not be an economist might not be a trade person might not even be a lawyer right so we need to be able to deal with those internal capacity issues if we are really going to be talking about also the structural transformation agenda and very lastly i i do think and and here i i agree with with the ambassador how we start looking inward uh you know the the sanctions regime that we have and maybe this is not the right country or room to use those sanctions they may get different ideas but i think the point is very clear i think we should find a way in which we are also holding each other to account i think the case of kenya is very well articulated in many places uh with regard to its transgression with the with the epa but we should have a mechanism where we can we can hold each other accountable in order for us to then have that coherent and coordinated approach and i think we should also stick to the ministers of finance from the african african union member states who have called repeatedly for an overhauling and a thorough review of the g20 common framework because even as recently as yesterday i think some of you will know that the deal with gana is now fallen off the table yeah because of of of some negotiation issues and so we you know i think we should continue with that call that this this common framework is not common in fact it is anything but common in in the way it is being used to to affect debt restructuring and debt relief and furthermore this condition that you must have an imf program is extremely extremely disruptive to countries on the continent that are suffering with perpetual crisis dealing with the kovid dealing with the the perpetual of the very systemic climate issue dealing with the political instability that has been caused by russia ukraine and now you know depending what what's going to happen in the middle east all of those have very deep impacts on the african economy and to condition us to have an imf program that further entrenchs policy constrictor takes up policy space fiscal policy space from governments is extremely extremely regressive in terms of helping us get out of this vicious cycle that you're in so i do think that call by the ministers of finance is extremely important and we should heed it more now than ever given what happened with gana just recently thank you shina yeah i think i'll i'll just answer there was a quick question around domestic resource mobilization i think one of the things that we that that we often emphasize when thinking about the ability to raise resources on the continent is that when you take a look at what is most responsible for um sort of insufficient the insufficiency of our domestic resource mobilization this is the concern of illicit financial flows that the ambassador just flagged and when you take a look at what is most responsible for illicit financial flows out of the continent 65 percent of that is due to the activity and behavior of global north multinational corporations on the continent so our first step always whenever engaging with governments when talking about domestic resource mobilization it is number one we need to look at measures that we put in place to curb the outflow of illicit financial flows ambassador mentioned that right now the statistic is close to 18 90 billion dollars that is a continent we lose juxtaposed against how much we receive in terms of overseas development assistance fdi it's almost double of that it's also half of what we need to achieve our sustainable development goals and what those numbers show us is that quite frankly if we're able to maintain within our borders our own resources we can actually make significant headway in achieving our developmental objective so what we always say first and foremost is don't use the easy route of putting in place vat right where the pressure is most felt by particularly marginalized and low income individuals that's where you then start to see that pushback those protests right by citizens because they they they're able to perceive right the unfairness of of the tax system and so what we always say is start with measures that number one have you maintaining what's already yours but also ensuring that you have progressive tax systems where you have the higher rate and that looks different in different countries right so for example i know in Uganda they recently implemented a wealth tax not all African countries can do that right but it was able to work there others you can see property taxes and all of these are different ways in which you can ensure that what you have is a progressive tax tax policy and i think just as i conclude in response to the point that jane made around structural transformation i completely agree we've been talking about this you're in and you're out i mean it goes back as far as the 1950s when coming krumah himself flagging this it's important that we actually do the work of implementing that and the point that ambassador mentioned now around thinking about not national sovereignty but collective sovereignty i think is something that's really going to have us heading that way how can we take advantage of our own internal market the afc fta creates this opportunity right what can we do to ensure that it's not just another document that's well written and on a piece of paper um but then one that we actually actualize to to have it benefit us directly thank you mr moderator thank you very much jim we have a few minutes let's we take one or two questions okay thank you to our panelists and of course the moderator for highlighting very important ideas i think from the previous the previous sessions we were reminded that about three quarters of the a budget is outsourced and as we even popularize the continental free trade area how is this different from other global liberalization policies advanced by by the wto for instance and we know that those policies have come to actually impact our sms negatively the organization the the the the small industries or the small organizations within our countries have been affected negatively by those uh those policies so how is the au cushioning itself from such policies to make sure that the small countries because we also know that countries are at different economic levels right so how are we making sure that as we implement that these countries benefit or advance at a good rate and and how are we not are we making sure that we are not reproducing kind of neocolonial practices in in these policies as we make them thank you basado in one minute beginning now yes uh in the afghanian agenda 2063 there's a commitment that to effectively implement this agenda 75 to 90 percent of the resources must be domestically mobilized so in this connection this is where the issue of domestic resource mobilization is being looked at so we are really working towards that angle but when now you look into the future in the medium you need to transform spending in such a way that in what you spend at the national level is not replicated at the continental level and to achieve that you transform the africanian commission into a supranational body and you transform the pan african parliament in in in south africa into a legislative body so that the decisions that are made out of that process become directives right now they are consensus these decisions if a member state does not implement them they are not sanctions when they are directives they will be sanctioned and that is going to create a very very strong african economy which is the self-sustaining which is collectively sobriety thank you thank you very much indeed insightful discussion thank you very much to the panelists for your valuable contribution and also to the audience for the engagement thank you very much and the key takeaways is that africa need to improve domestic revenue mobilization better public financial management and also push on structural transformation address illicit financial flow and the reform of the global financial architecture and also the g20 a common reform a common framework for that treatment if africa will continue to pay update it should not be at the expense of its future thank you very much and welcome to the panel on the future of democratic governance in africa before we begin i want to introduce our panelists i can promise you they're all very esteemed and if you google them you'll find out but i'm not going to spend time reading their bios because they've got great things to say and i want you to hear them so but dr fonte akumi is the executive director of the institute for security studies oge onubagu is the africa director of the wilson center susan stigat is the director at the africa program here at usip and joseph asunka is the executive director of the afrobarometer so welcome to our panel thank you thank you they also all happen to be very good friends of mine so i great respect for them i'm very grateful to be in conversation with them today and susan thank you for making sure this is not a west africa panel this was almost a west africa problem that we're going to talk about so appreciate you helping us hoping us i think um so for the purpose of this panel we're going to spend about 40 minutes or so uh in conversation uh with me asking the panel questions and then we're going to have 20 minutes of q and a with the audience uh and then about 10 minutes of closing remarks at the end so uh that's how we're going to make this work give or take a few minutes here and there uh but before i turn to the panel i want to just set up the stage a little bit um since 2020 there's been eight coups on the african continent uh and across the continent we're seeing uh economic decline governor's challenges and continued aftermath of covid-19 pandemic several countries in particularly west africa have also suffered from a growing extremism and there's also the youth population that continues to grow several these things we've talked about here today and i'm hoping our panelists can help us tease that out and the united states as an ally of the u.s government often seems caught in a cycle of what i consider a confusion dismay and inaction not from a lack of will but from a lack of what how do we do and how do we respond to these things for its part the african union which actually has mechanisms to address some of these problems often finds itself also unable to act or unable to act effectively enough perhaps that's a lack of legitimacy perhaps that's and a number of issues desirate will tell us why it's actually pretty good but it's not entirely so so we're going to talk more about that and across the continent though we do see a demand for democratic traditions and a yearning for improved governance we also see citizens who have a desire to have a voice and a vision for their future that unfortunately sometimes their leaders have not helped match and so today what i'm hoping is fante susan ogand jo will help us talk through some of these issues but also give us some potential solutions that we might be able to think about and i'd like to begin with fante and talk about why it seems like at least from my perspective in the 1990s we talk about the kus a lot on the african continent but they seem to be back so help me understand or help us understand why kus seems to have come back and if there are similarities to the places where you've seen them occur thanks a lot for that introduction and for the initial question as well i'm looking at the kus which have taken place on the continent and i think you need to step a little further than 2020 and start with zimbabwe for example um so you could categorize them into three sets um the first set of kus which took place in long against long-serving leaders um rabbit mugabe in zimbabwe oma hasan elbe shiri i mean was a revolution which was followed by a ku um and in chat an unconstitutional change of government um which saw um mamahama debi coming to um power as a transitional leader um the second set of countries are countries um which were going through transitions themselves so the kus that we saw in mali nizia bukina faso angini actually kus that emerged from transitions gone wrong to a large extent and i think we need to interrogate exactly how those transitions went wrong um the third um set of kus um or the third ku pretty more category would be one which fits neither in the first nor the second category which is the kus in um nizia where you are looking moving towards the consolidation of a transition following um three successive elections and then you saw kus so those different dynamics um basically provide different sets of explanations for kus um and i think we could sum them up across about five different spaces the first is regime fatigue right um regime fatigue that we saw in long serving countries and what does regime fatigue say about countries where you have presidents who have led for the pa for over three decades and who are aging and how would we envisage transitions in those countries and this kind of forecast the ideas about ku transitions um the second observation is elite rivalry between two general groups a group of secureokrat within the establishment and plutocrats you could if you describe them in that sense and in most of the kus that where we have seen long serving leaders deposed the plutocrats have never won the battle to take over they have always been won by secureokrat and the third is particularly within transitional countries is the question of governance effectiveness um and the gap between the delivery on one hand of government services and the expectation of government particularly um running against the tide of a number of multi-dimensional crisis that these countries are facing and in the sahel particularly you cannot avoid interrogating the um pressures posed by terrorist movement on this government and their capacities to effectively respond to them the fourth dimension of course points to much more of these structural issues that have been mentioned here on the economic front but which also exist on the political front as well and lastly you need to interrogate the capacity for institutions to escape capture from specific political elites so um those different dimensions actually cover the gamut across three sets of categories of kus that we have seen across the continent and i might have missed some of course but i'm sure the audience would point that out thank you very much thank you vante appreciate the nuance and the different origins of but also the emphasis that you just ended with a lack of governance effectiveness in the face of multi-dimensional crisis i think when we think of why these things happen and whether there's a turn to extremism or turn to kus there's often there is this lack of effectiveness that we have to think about okay i wonder if you can talk to us about this it's been pretty clear that kus don't occur in a vacuum as fante just talked about right there's a role that international community can play and should play in arresting these and the root causes of them so taking the african union and the regional economic communities as one aspect um or i guess two the origins and the au um there's essential stakeholders so what role do they have to play in supporting countries before they reach the kus stage and what options do regional policy engagements and approaches have in the context of frozen transitions thank you very much candy and i'm going to try and see how i respond to this and um it is a pleasure to be here for this conversation i applaud all of you that have been here since nine a.m. this morning and now you're ending the discussion with governance in africa well congratulations so let me pick up from where uh fonte stopped as he laid out what the environment looks like clearly this is a very challenging environment and as you rightfully pointed out kus do not occur in a vacuum and i think all the points that fonte has raised as he laid this picture first has actually pointed a painted a picture of a of a challenge with the structure the state society structure as it exists on the continent today increasingly that question about the capacity of the state and the capacity of the different institutions to be able to effectively respond to the needs of citizens and then alongside you have an increasingly aware citizenry that is demanding more from their governments and joe might talk more about this on the afrobarometer side as we see data of citizens that continuously demand for better representation and now we're stuck in a space where we're asking ourselves are these states able to deliver on the outcomes of of democracy and i think pulling on that thread of you know asking clear the fact that yes kus do not coin the vacuum but what can regional buddies like the au the continental buddies like the au and regional economic buddies like echo us either than the rest of them do in the situation like this i think if we go coming from uh 2023 all the way going to 2025 we'll see that there are a number of elections that are scheduled to occur on the continent in this year alone we're looking at about 19 elections that are scheduled keynote on scheduled not all of them are going to happen they're scheduled to happen on the continent this year and at the backdrop of where we see concerns with governance across the continent you always see the questions of flawed elections the questions of poor governance so this provides an opportunity for the au and the other regional economic buddies to take a forward looking approach to how we address some of these issues now at the end of the day the au and echo us there is a lot of emphasis that is put on election observation missions and that's great it's great to have that visibility but then it's the then what what happens afterwards and i believe that is a gap that we see time and time again often the mistakes that we see when you talk about a stalled transition the mistake that we see countries tend to make over and over again is that especially when a country has experienced a military takeover the transition often ends up being the same it's often the same conversations that we're having when we're talking about a transition perhaps it's time for us to start moving from this conversation about a transition to a transformation can we think about new systems that come after a coup can we think about how organizations like the au and the regional economic buddies can actually position themselves effectively with the tools that they have to be able to work in a space where they can prevent and then going back to the question about the tools i think we have to do some deep soul searching and really ask ourselves if the tools that the au has today from the peace security architecture the africa peer review mechanism mechanism all the different tools that the au has at its disposal the au and the regional economic buddies are those tools effective to be able to solve the challenges that we see on the continent today the governance challenges that we see on the continent today that's a question that i'm trying out there i don't have the answer but you know looking at what we see across africa today we have to seriously ask ourselves the question if the tools are effective is the au itself actually well positioned in a space of prevention is there a focus on conflict prevention or more just responding to crisis at this point i know the au had the continental early warning systems and folks like yaki and others in the room who were involved many years back in designing tools like this for early warning right now those tools are not as effective as they were because the au has really focused more on structural adjustments and not necessarily adjustments to address some of the systems within within the body so i think one really asking ourselves if the tools that the au and the regional economic buddies have at their disposal are effective for the challenges as we see them today and third really going back to the idea of the question of who takes the lead when we ask about how the au or regional economic buddies can be able to address or prevent these challenges or prevent a coup before it happens within the au there's always been the discussion on subsidiarity who takes the lead and we've seen that this has also created there's a space there's a gray area here um and that the response and because of this gray area the response has not been consistent across the board we see the response in chad was different from the response in zimbabwe we see the response in codivo is different from the response in guine so at this at the end of the day we have to bring to the forefront i think it's uh this presents an opportunity to really have so to say the au to have a come to jesus moment to really figure out if this conversation on subsidiarity who really takes the lead here because now it has really turned into more of a political discussion and not necessarily one focused on effectiveness and especially now in today's environment where you have countries that are within the regional buddies for instance in the case of your aes countries um so bukina nijia and mali asking to leave um or put it in the request to leave echo us they weren't that polite asking to leave echo us um this is a question where you have to ask yourself okay what role does echo is this really a space for echo us to play a role or is this where the au needs to step up so i'm going to leave it there thank you and two things that i'll highlight from uh what you said there uh the 19 elections on this continent in the next you said the next year did i get that 19 elections scheduled for this 2024 2024 and how that's a proactive a way for the ut actually proactive in addressing some of these challenges and that the root causes uh and then the idea that there is um are the au tools fit for purpose i really like that framing um and if not how do you revise them how do they revise them for what is necessary thank you uh and susan let's talk about the u.s. government um the context will differ uh in many many cases right uh but broadly speaking what what do you think the u.s. government should be doing uh in countries that are dealing with instability to help prevent a coup to begin with um and once a coup has occurred what should the u.s. government do if a coup has occurred thanks kande um the interesting thing about this panel is i think it's full of people who are usually the moderators and not the speakers um so i should say uh at the outset usip of course does not speak for the u.s. government um i think um the engagement by the united states really depends on what the particular drivers are across the different dimensions that fonte laid out at the beginning um we recently heard from some colleagues who visited from from the au um that their main message was engage engage engage and i think that's really good advice um there are many different ways to engage there's engagement that's very public in nature there's engagement that talks about norms and standards um there is engagement that pushes people um there's quiet discussions behind closed doors um there are deep relationships with security actors in the military and civilian security and intelligence um that i think could help the united states to understand the fears concerns aspirations of people who might take steps who might enable or who might um give a permissive environment for a coup to take place um so so i think those are all incredibly important aspects um i think the other thing that the u.s. and partners more broadly can be doing is is thinking about the the readiness of a country to manage endure and respond to a situation where a coup takes place and so part of that is legal part of its understanding what what are the frameworks what happens what's what should be um actually catalyzed um part of its political um and i think a really important part of it is talking with civilian actors um when i say civilian actors i don't mean civil society only i'm talking about political entities i'm talking about unions i'm talking about former diplomats former military leaders people who are shaping policy decisions and calculations in countries and i think those are really um critical aspects to build the network the infrastructure um the trust that's needed to to respond in really difficult circumstances uh when coups do take place um i i hear a lot of people talking about whether a coup is a coup or whether it's a good coup or a bad coup um obviously those are debates that the african union has to discuss itself within the peace and security council and determine how they're going to act it strikes me that it's not particularly helpful for the united states to deliberate debate dialogue and hold on declaring whether something is a coup or not so i think a swift determination um is very important um obviously there are legal implications and constraints on funding that result and assistance in partnership that result from that determination um and i think similarly to thinking about are the tools fit for purpose i think the united states has an important conversation to say when there are constraints on assistance because of a coup what are the other pathways that exist to keep open the engagement that was necessary beforehand even more necessary afterwards to ensure that the roadmap the pathway um has a chance of getting back to democratic civilian lead and peaceful dispensations thank you susan so there is there's a request for the us to continue to engage right there's also the sort of and get us to engage citizens beyond um civil society so key stakeholders or businesses whoever else is in that should be at the table um and then this last point of swiftly determine a coup and not navel gaze of is this a coup what does this mean if we call it a coup and all those things those excellent points thank you joe uh let's talk about the afrobarometer so you all do polls and you've been doing this i love the afrobarometer i've been a huge fan since 2008 when i started paying attention to these things um so as even as you've seen coups occur we see that there's a and there's a lack of governance but we see citizens continue to demand this right so there's a demand for governance demand for democratic trend traditions right um can you help us nuance that top line though sort of like over time as you all have been doing this is there what do we do we actually what does that trend line look like for democracies the demand for democracy as people tend to see this what uh fontan okay talk about is there's a lack of delivery of services there's a lack of delivery of governance yet people continue to yearn for it so has that ebden flowed over time and what does that look like if you can help us through that see that trend line better right um thanks thanks so much um glad you've asked me to talk about afrobarometer and not about governance because uh that's that's that's uh much bigger but i mean you're right i think um across the continent and that's the good news i'll bring to the governor discussion we're going to talk about governance in africa it's always a gloomy picture but i think from the citizen perspective there's a lot of good news there but of course there's a nuance that we need to bring it to the fore because of what fontan um okay just mentioned in terms of the delivery site but on the demand sites we often want to talk about governance and democracy on the continent from the citizen perspective of afrobarometer afrobarometer is a public opinion survey that we conduct in about 40 countries on the continent so what we've been asking citizens about is the demand site how much and how resilient are they in terms of their support and commitment to democracy and democratic governance across the continent throughout all our surveys we've done since 1999 the commitment to democracy remains very high it used to be much higher in the 1990s is calm down a little bit by a stellar majority view that more than three quarters of africans say that they support democracy that's the two thirds support democracy at the same vein as mentioned here talking about military coups there are some countries we've seen citizens come out to the streets to celebrate coups because you know and there's a sense of ideas people in favor of military rule but that is not the case and i can provide a little more nuance as we go along but same 66 percent of africans reject military rule okay and so often when you think about the way coups have happened it all comes down to the issue of the delivery site i'll talk briefly about the delivery as well but majority support democracy 66 percent majority reject military rule and when it comes to one man rule or one party rule as akum just mentioned regime fatigue is one of the things that citizens on the continent really hate and so almost 80 percent of africans don't want one man rule and they don't want one party rule so those are roundly rejected the only authoritarian form of government that seems to be having some sympathies with the citizens on the continent is in the military and you've seen that it used to be about 80 percent rejection in our 2014 that has declined over time and so that's probably the nuance i want to put there so even though africans do not want military rule the extent to which they resisted military rule in 2014 is much stronger than it is today so about 10 percentage point drop between 2014 but it is still a majority rejection so even though it used to be 75 percent it's come down to 66 percent of africans who say they don't want military rule but the fact is that it has deteriorated over time and we need to be careful what does that mean why are citizens becoming more and more sympathetic to military rule but the underlying fact is that majority still rejected so it's not the case that majority are in favor of military rule they reject military rule and some of the drivers that we've seen in the data has mentioned by Fonte and Hoge here is from the delivery side and the delivery is not just the economic goods actually the economic goods are secondary and i'll come to that shortly it is the delivery of these political governors that people are concerned about to what extent are governments able to deliver quality elections how are they able to fight corruption in particular and especially corruption at a local government level when local government do not work or there is perceived corruption at local government level that's the one thing that really erodes people's commitment to democratic governors and so i think in more and more as we think about how to improve you know maybe sustain people's commitment to democracy on the continent i mean i'll just mention two things but of course there are different factors that were found one being the issue of quality elections whenever people perceive elections to be of good quality they are more likely to be committed to democratic governance and norms and when there's perceptions of corruption especially at the local government level it also drives down people's commitment to democratic governance the only thing where we see economic factors having a challenge in terms of declining um commitment on the continent is satisfaction with the way democracy works it is not people's commitment to democracy and democratic norms those ones we don't see the economic factors whether it is poverty or whatever you use as an economic measure it doesn't really impact people's commitment to democratic governance what it affects is their satisfaction with the way democracy actually works and so we make that distinction between the demand for democracy and of course the supply side which is the satisfaction side as well so what people want and their commitment to democracy is not affected by economic factors it is the extent to which they are satisfied with the way democracy works that one immediately throwing an economic variable it brings it down people are not satisfied but they still remain committed to the principles of democracy and democratic governance but i'll stop them maybe i'll take up others as we go along thank you that's i'd like that distinction a lot the satisfaction with democracy has to do with the economic impacts that people feel but not necessarily whether or not they want democracy right that's important and then you'd also talked about the extent to which folks are rejecting military still but at the declining rate which i think comes back to the points that Ogea and Fonte have made in terms of how people perceive these things and i also think this distinction around how local governments and the local governance affects people's desire and understanding of democracy because that's what they see most vividly in their home within their own homes right Fonte we talked about the afghan union a lot today we talked about the regional economic communities and i would venture to say that there's a crisis of legitimacy with the afghan union right i don't know that i would go as far as move everybody this morning say throw it away i think that's quite provocative and perhaps too far but at the same time an institution that has bia in its membership has mo 70 in its membership the list can go on strikes me as there's something wrong there right and so curious from your perspective how can african leader african countries where the leaders have aged and whether no definitive succession plans in those contexts how can multilateral institutions and instruction institutions help prepare to support democratic and support democratic leadership transitions hopefully they're democratic and with whom should they be engaging proactively with to build relationships longer you know there is back in the room you know no that that's an interesting question right um but we've got to separate the moral argument on whether um the bias and the mosa venues need to sit there and stick with the institutional arguments to begin with which is the african union is an intergovernmental organization and um it assembles the heads of state um on the continent um the bigger question i think is how whether it's suffering from a crisis of legitimacy um we from the conversations earlier this morning right which multilateral organization is not facing um some kind of interrogation on its resondage at the moment and on what its outcomes and outputs exactly are right and the african union is no exception um and that is also refracted um to the regional economy communities whether you're looking at sudan's exit from igad or um the exit which oge spoke about of um the sahel state from ekoas so there's a real interrogation of um the resondage behind regional economy communities and the au at the moment um the second observation um is about the fact that as intergovernmental organizations there are only a sum total of the capacities of the state that are members to these organization so in some spaces you could argue um that the whether the african union as well as the rex can only perform as well as the member states give them the capacity and um the political bandwidth to actually act and at the moment um both the au and the rex on the continent are very hamstrong in the ability to effective respond um to some of the pricing issues the third observation um is the au's um institutional architecture um has expanded um quite a bit since um the transformation from the organization of african unity to the african union um and oge mentioned um the aprem but we should also mention the aga act the aga absa secretariat um the key question there would be um to interrogate the effectiveness as um tools for advancing democratization on the continent um vis-a-vis the institutional reforms within african union as well which have created the political affairs peace and security structure which um at the moment is also a little over burdened and overwhelmed by all the transformations that are taking place on the continent so the short answer would be that um at the moment um the regional economy communities and the african union will be ill adapted to effectively respond to some of the challenges that we are facing the question then goes where would the responses come from um the first has to we have to go back to um state society relations right um because when you talk of governance you're looking at the broad question of deep inclusion and what roles do societies play to actually hold their governors accountable um the second issue um that we've got to interrogate about states as well um is the capacity to provide the kind of security goods um that are expected by the citizens and that speaks as well to the social contract and um the third issue you've got to ask um is the capabilities of the state to exercise full territoriality and on all of these matrices i think most african countries fall short and therefore they work within sort of this distorted space where they've got to contend with internal challenges while at the same time trying to counter while while at the same time trying to reify a certain sovereignty which is already reduced by these challenges which they face and that is further complexified by the fact that in reifying their sovereignty they are actually diminishing the potential supranationality of regional economy communities and the au and within that complex context um advancing the democratic agenda um on the continent would be about partnerships it would be about local activism as well it would be about leadership um within the political class and it would be about institutions because in fact one of the first um elements of state capture that we see in trying to undermine the democratic process processes is the constitution constitutional manipulation and the capture of the constitutional court which then leads to um sort of the validation of the will um we are seeing it happening happening togo at the moment um we saw a constitutional change in the central african republic as well and so we have to be able to respond to those effectively and at the moment i don't um i would i mean given the current context it would be difficult to see how the regional economy communities which are struggling with an identity crisis can actually address those effectively and with the african union as well thanks thank you i that expansion of multilateral institutions not just the au are having a crisis of like who are we what do we do i think that's an important point so i don't take back my accusation but nonetheless i think it's important for um susan can we talk about financial assistance um and if you can talk to us about uh what support well let me back up a little bit so the african union is largely supported by outside actors right um in terms of the funds that receives and how it um given the lack of dues that members pay right um so if we think of financial assistance uh what support could be provided to the au and the rex to combat uh this economic influence of malign actors uh and also what pressures can multilateral institutions apply uh to dissuade unconstitutional governments um from embracing malign state actors we can think of uh we can think of any number of actors take a big big questions maybe before i dive into your question i do i do think it's worth taking a moment just to acknowledge that the the strength of the african union institution is that there is an established enshrined norm against kus and probably everybody in this room takes that for granted but it's not the case in any other multilateral institution around the world so the way that we're having this conversation is fundamentally shaped and grounded in a commitment that was made by states pushed by citizens hard one because of what people had lived through experienced um informed by their hope desire and aspiration for democracy and then written in to the fundamental principles of the african union and so this isn't to um try to dissuade you from your opinion again day but i do i do think we we don't say that out loud enough and the fact that that commitment is there and exists um also shouldn't be taken for granted uh so to your question about financial assistance i mean first i think the development of the au peace fund is a is an important step an important aspect uh before the conversation goes too far on financial assistance i think it's important for the african union to have a conversation about what it is they would wish to do uh and so the the the resurgence of kus has i think left many of us without the tools without the plans without the ideas about how to engage leading into them um and so it strikes me that first and foremost that that's an incredibly important priority um i would also say that we collectively need to rethink about how we're engaged leading into elections um my my fear is that of the nineteen that are scheduled if there is a risk we are too late and uh we tend to think about the risk post election or um in investing in the electoral institutions to gain credibility um but in many countries there isn't um there's an entire question of how the political system is constructed and developed so changing the leader won't change the lack of a credible political party changing a leader won't change whether um governments at a local level or international level are accountable to their people and so it strikes me that there's a much more fundamental conversation to have which is the state society conversation but maybe just to put a a bit finer of a point on it um maline actors maybe we can come back to that in q and a because i feel like it's such a it's such a broad um bucket and i don't know that i can do it justice without taking away from joe's time there and i take your point about the enshrined principle within the african union i think i take it for granted i think many of us in this room do take it for granted and as we criticize the au i think that is an important starting point of we cannot have this conversation about many other institutions where that is a norm or at least a given how it's enforced and how it actually plays out in real time matters as well but the actual principle is important i take that point okay i want to come to you to talk about citizens right we've talked a lot about the international community and sort of like broadly whether it's the au the african union the u.s government but let's talk about citizens and here taking the point that i think susan made earlier around it's not just civil society it's also businesses it's also any number of institutions that have that are key stakeholders any number of interests that are key stakeholders in a country but what role do they have to play in ensuring actual political transitions and what opportunities might there be to engage them earlier in the process of transitions that may not be going well thanks kendi and i just want to acknowledge susan susan always has a way of seeing the positive in everything it's the canadian in you so um so to your question about citizens i think it is clear full stop just listening to the conversations here today that there is a need to renew the social contract between citizens and their governments full stop and this push for transitions we will continue to see it happen on the continent and it will even intensify further given the fact that africa is the youngest continent and the agitation that we see are coming from young people as we just recently saw in the case of senegal this will continue to happen you continue to see a population that is not ready for the same types of transitions but actually wants to see a transformation west africa in particular is really at an inflection point at this at this time where it could go either way it could go in the way of seeing progress in terms of good governance and effectively functioning democratic institutions or it could go the other way where we see a lot of insurgencies and insecurity so it's really and west africa in particular is at an inflection point and i think this is where we have to think clearly about how we engage citizen voices in these conversations and then when we talk about civil society civil society is not one homogeneous unit i think even for us in the room for all of us here in the room we've gotten to a point where we just say let's engage civil society and we end up engaging the same organizations that we've been engaging for the last 20 years in the same discussions ongoing so as much as how we think about how citizens engage on the continent it's also a question for all of us here in the room that work in different organizations or run different projects where we have to engage citizen voices how do we identify the organizations that we work with how do we identify the people that we work with to the point that it goes beyond your um sort of formal civil society organizations across the continent we've seen a rise in social movements across the board how do we engage these social movements effectively is there a mechanism that exists within the us government in our international organizations to effectively engage with these social movements because at the end of the day you can have movements that can push to perhaps get an individual out of office but then what happens next how do we assist them in the organizing process how do we assist them in the long term and i think going back to the point that i made about election observation and the fact that Ekoas and the AU is really you know effective when it comes to creating that visibility in election observation but what happens after the election observation process how do we continue engaging beyond just that you know the few days that we're there on the ground so the visibility is great but then what happens afterwards and i think with civil society i think to the point that has already been made by my co-panelist here is that surveys continue to show us time and time again that citizens value democratic systems of government above all other citizens value the right and the opportunity to be able to select their own leaders and i think we have to keep this in mind when we effectively think about how we engage with citizens on the ground i think how we create that space to have effective conversation leading up or even before a koo happens not only waiting until after a koo happens and we start struggling to find different dialogues and going around and organizing different summits and workshops and meetings and how do we move from that point and i think there is an opportunity now because there is greater citizen awareness on the continent today especially among youth that the governance that they're getting or what their leaders are providing is not right so really thinking about how we effectively engage those voices think about academia in a lot of the academic institutions on the continent there's a lot of effective research that is ongoing but how do we translate that research coming from the different academic institutions into a way that will make sense to policy actors across our academic institutions on the continent there is a lot of work and research ongoing but being able to translate all of that work and make it useful for a policy audience there is that disconnect i think we find out that on the continent likewise in the us and in the international community we tend to stick to our different silos academics are speaking to academics those in the economic sector are speaking to others in the economic sector those in health are in the health meetings but across the continent we see that these issues are all interconnected how do we bring these voices together in forums that are connected summits like this discussions like this and that's why i really love the africa futures tool because it goes across board these types of discussions that can actually show an intersection the business community for one to as well the small business community these are individuals that may not be identified as your traditional civil society organizations but really thinking about how we engage them and i think one thing i find really curious is that whenever i'm on the continent and you actually go to different conversations everyone to some extent is knowledgeable about the challenges with the political system you might be at a religious function and everyone is talking about how you're providing solutions about uh to to resolve certain issues so we have to break from the norm we have to break from business as usual when it comes to identifying the partners that we work with and identifying those that we engage with and i think the opportunity is now the time is right because data shows us it shows us that citizens want to engage and this trend in democratic transition it's not going to stop in africa it's going to continue because it's a very young population and young people are demanding better governance young people are demanding better democratic outcomes so it's not going to stop so we have to think outside the box in our engagement with citizens thank you and i think this point about the greater need for a new social contract between citizens and government and citizens is an important one and at mdi we often talk about how elections are not an event right it's the everything pre post election i think you made a lot of those points today so i think yeah we'd love to have folks talk about that in the question and answer period and joe i want to come back to you one last time so before the afrobarometer you were in philanthropy for about five years or so working on how to fund government accountability right can you talk about this expansion of beyond the citizen of the citizen and expanding who the citizen is and talk about the role that philanthropy private sector any number of actors who have resources can play in helping to steward uh political transitions or to help make sure citizens who want to have a say or having their say all right um so maybe i can just talk to one issue and i hope that that that becomes my my core takeaway for first of all talking about young people on the continent the work that i did previously in my previous life it's about citizen participation how do you mobilize citizens to engage with their governments to improve service delivery across the continent i think um the first thing i want to mention is when i talked about the the issue of the militaries and then kus the data does show over time especially the last time that we asked the question should the military intervene if your elected leaders abuse their power and unfortunately majority of africans said yes and so slim majority by slim majority about 50 something percent the concerning for outcome of that question is the fact that younger people are more likely to say the military should intervene and so there's that now hunger of said young people on the continent to see change and i said i'm going to talk about one thing because i also want to go back to elections if you provide the opportunity for young people and they know that they can vote their government out as it happened in zambia or it happened in senegal recently they will do it and i think if we are able to provide election infrastructure that provides citizens the confidence that they can actually vote and get a government out of power or bring a government into power that would be super critical and i think in some ways um the our data does show whenever elections are perceived to be of high quality people have greater commitment to democratic governance and they are also more likely to be satisfied with the way democracy works and the trust in the electoral management bodies continues to improve so one thing i might advocate is maybe two things one the election infrastructure that is in place now increasingly there's a lot of technology being used in the now election management the question is how do we make sure that the infrastructure for election management is done in such a way that people can have confidence in that if we leave the procurement of election management infrastructure to individual governments who go outside of the continent to source software to come and run elections who will still continue to run into these problems is it possible to have a centralized management of election infrastructure on the continent that is a shared resource maybe centrally or originally managed on the continent where i'm confident that the elections that are being run in my country in togo the ultimate server that holds those results are seated somewhere on the continent and not in euro because i may not have that trust that a server that is sitting in the united states here can really be trusted to maintain the quality but can we have a system and mechanism on the continent where these resources are shared because when it comes to regulation how do you regulate the use of technology in elections if you have a centralized management system on the continent where we have a standard way of kind of regulating the use of software in the now in elections to improve no citizen trust in it i think it can go a long way to help deal with that and so in some ways maybe this is one of the areas where the african union can be useful that there's a centralized way of dealing when they say that the investments that togo needs to make in his election system that's not just to be togo's responsibility alone but it's a shared responsibility but that countries then can contextualize it within their systems so for me i think making sure that elections work and they work effectively that is where you will see young people really being mobilized and i think when young people really mobilize on the continent the issue of accountability would grow from there and i just hope that we'll be able to do that more effectively thank you i thought you told you that have solutions centralized infrastructure for election management i'm going to turn to the audience first thank you all for engaging me in my questions that i threw at you all would love to get questions from the audience i'm going to go welfare first and then come to desire thank you so much to the speaker i'm sorry can you introduce yourself before you hi everybody my name is haseen i'm currently at a mid-yard network in a previous lifetime i worked in tunisia and on a lot of these questions and one of the papers i wrote with a a couple of other people was on constitutional courts in tunisia and the importance of forming them in this in this view of electoral infrastructure and rule of law infrastructure that really supports elections and actually transpiring in a transparent way in the before during and after and you know this question keeps coming up again and again and i heard multiple speakers many of you mentioned this um with regards to senegal for example there was a vote in parliament that postponed the elections until december then there was a constitutional council that actually overturned that decision and said no we have to have elections in february and they had them and the elections were successful and so i'm curious to hear all of your thoughts in fact as how you think initiatives that help integrate and really strengthen rule of law how can these initiatives be supported and strengthened and it's a challenge especially when i think there is no political willingness to actually enshrine these institutions that really are really not very sexy but in fact are very very important to actually ensure democratic transitions and rule of law and and electoral integrity so really curious to hear your thoughts and thank you so much for this absolutely riveting conversation thanks should we take a couple and then uh then uh there's already i saw your hand first and then um who's okay behind thank you um i'm Desiree um franco fornafica director of one campaign based in Dakar senegal and uh thank you for the for this debate i like your proposal if we happen to have um centralize electoral system regionally in africa like next period you will see there will be a transition of power of at least half of the current head of state in africa i bet you but my my uh innovation is more a contribution okay you ask a question when you are speaking to see if the current framework around the african union is fit for purpose to take us to the transformation you say you don't have the answer i just want to contribute in that uh the current policy and frameworks of the african union are part of the most progressive within existing international organization integral organizations real problem is basically people who are behind those framework those institutions the au will be as good as member state representative are basically if imagine a scenario where you have a set of country like senegal butwana south africa gala populate the african union we have a different debate we have a different situation so far so basically is about who are behind and i'm hopeful that as we move on you have more and more really democratic countries and then they will change as we go just to finish i think there are few proposals that in the previous discussion for example one of the important thing that need to happen within the au architecture is a certain level of supranationality that will be very very important to move things ahead currently you need a consensus to be able to take in a decision forward or even to implement it in a supranationality contest the au commission which the engine will be able to draft things beside whatever member state one that will be actually and like a very good situation this also go with the pan african parliament which today is just a room that registered some some idea or issue recommendation that nobody actually read if you have a legislative body which law or provisions are implementable in the countries you have a different scenario so basically my my my response is we need to have a certain supranationality to be able to take forward and implement some decision and that will also help us to have an accountability mechanism to see who are those who are not implementing their agree decisions and something need to happen so that decision and all sleeping in the chef thank you thank you guys i'm going to take Dennis and then i'm going to do the second round with Kate and Morty Dennis ask question i thank you so much for the presentation i like your suggestions but in Uganda we already know the results for 2026 7 is going to get 62 percent his opponent is going to get 30 percent so it doesn't matter what you do they are going to turn off the internet they will turn off the electricity and they announced the results this this will to retain power it doesn't matter if you have the courts they have abused the courts it doesn't matter if you have a centralized system we know who sits on the AU and they are all part of the same clique so for me my challenge is that what's the responsibility of the western world where we go to DC here and advocate as citizens but we are facing off against lobbies who are paid 30 grand a month do you know why african governments come and spend 30 grand here on kestri because they know where the power centers are you the western countries sustain these dictatorships they sustain them militarily by giving them loans so for me my question is how can the western world i was a step away i don't want to say step away but i feel they stand in the way of democracy in africa when we go and say museveni is killing people on the streets they say oh but he fought hiv he did an excellent job in fighting hiv and aids in 1980s is a remarkable leader oh look how many refugees is taking one million that's remarkable look what is doing in somalia is putting boots on the ground serving the united states from sending the amareens to somalia so you have those geopolitical issues you have national interests that we have to encounter so it's hard for me to even say that we can find solutions when we know there's this big juggernaut you're facing we know we go to the state department many times we sit with our desk officers we say what can you do to help you know we see the reports if you go to the state department report they have human rights violations for all these leaders it's in their reports they know everything that's going on whether it's the european union whether it's the united states but we still see the same problems over and over again so for me my question is that what's the role what's the responsibility of the western world yes we fought colonialism we are taught we are independent but we're still dependent on the western world they call the shorts in my opinion and the strong history of the western world supporting dictatorships the history is there so how do we combat let's wrap this up so we can get back yeah i know i i'm sorry for the presentation but how do we combat this juggernaut that's really the question because i feel we are facing off against a very strong powerful you know western world to liberate africa thank you thank you so let's take those three and jobs out with you and then uh work right right um big big questions there in terms of the rule of law i think that's a critical piece because the judiciary is a critical player in the national country election adjudication usually their decisions can be very powerful in many ways and i think if that's you gave the case of whether it was malawi or senegal recently it does provide a lot of confidence in people's feeling that they can make a change and i think it helps to mobilize citizens in favor of some of those institutions so some of the things to think about is how do we create a system that allows for the protection of the judiciary from especially external political influence because that's one thing i've got the second thing is even within the judiciary itself sometimes there are elements internally that can actually influence and so when you're thinking about the independence of the judiciary you need to think both in terms of the political influence from external forces but also the internal forces that can sometimes impact how they operate but i think it's a critical institution that needs protection and i hope that will continue to build some kinds of protections especially for judicial officers in the country and the judges who make some of these critical political decisions of course one of the findings we have in our data that show you know what do you call it judicial independence is one of the critical drivers of people's commitment to democratic governance so those are the three key things corruption elections and the judiciary now the independence of the judiciary and how they operate in terms of your issue yes i can i do know that the international community has a role to play and it can actually damage citizens of commitment to democracy in many ways because corruption is one of the issues that people struggle with on the continent and if the international community for the sake of geopolitical expediency if you turn a blind eye to corruption or you protect a dictator just because it is expedient from the global power competition then all that we are doing is damaging people's commitment to democracy because a corrupt government setting in place citizens that is the thing that drives citizens commitment to them one satisfaction is already very low commitment to democracy is still high if we are not careful and we continue to uphold corrupt governments in place all it would do is gradually eat away people's commitment to democracy or get to a point where even getting citizens to have that enthusiasm and hunger for democracy may no longer be there and so i do agree with your point to what extent does the western world or the development world that developed world contribute to citizens disengagement from democratic governance i think we need to be careful about that i don't have the answers for that but as as you rightly point out that's something we need to continue to emphasize yeah thanks maybe on the constitutional court question i think there are ways to connect lawyers unions and constitutional court judges and others who are involved in the design in the of these institutions and developing that norman standard makes makes a ton of sense and it will work incredibly well when there is political will to make it work or where there's political will to tolerate it so that it tips the balance when things are very complicated but i would caution that if there isn't political will to make it work it becomes entirely captured and can just as easily be a tool or a way to continue to hold power and so i think this is where we face a challenge where we're talking about trying to talk about approaches across 55 countries or even across you know the eight that are have faced kus when when the context are incredibly different in terms of political systems in terms of space for civic and and other actors um on the maybe just on the finance side because i think it touches a point here i i wanted to reflect on the country that had um a koo on a koo and then followed by a koo and a war which is Sudan um and in the moment where uh there was an opening for a civilian dispensation uh the international community failed to provide timely and politically relevant assistance so that that civilian government could make the hard decisions it had to make and deliver on citizens expectations and hopes for democracy uh and that's i i don't know that i have the answer that's easy to say in a sound bite but the reality of how do you identify release funding make it contingent enough that it still puts pressure on those who want to keep holding on to power it's not straight forward but there was a test there was a moment and we failed on that and i think the responsibility is you know squarely on the hands of the military and the rsf for where the country is today um but we missed a moment where there were democrats who were ready to drive forward um and where people had gone to the streets who had struggled and we didn't we weren't able to collectively provide that cover thanks kende and um i guess on the question about the rule of law while not necessarily a direct answer to the question but i think senegal for one basically provides a case study of why we invest in strengthening democratic institutions what we saw happened there in in in senegal with the courts um the constitutional courts these are all institutions that are homegrown these are institutions senegal is a country that has never experienced a coup before and so at the end of the day these institutions were able to work to uphold to uphold the right decision at the end of the day so senegal provides an excellent case study of why we should invest in long term why there should be long term investment in strengthening democratic institutions um desiree to the point about the african union thank you so much for your response i was told when i came up here that desiree is the expert on au so thank you thank you so much for for for the response there and um to the last question definitely don't have a response um for that but i think this is where again soul searching comes on the part of african governments and the au and regional economic bodies at the end of the day the hot decisions that have to be made about africa has to be made by africans and has to be made by african institutions every country engages based on their own interest the us will engage based on its interest in uh like every country engages based on their based on their own on their own interest so at the end of the day i believe that um being able to resolve and address some of the gaps that you identified africans will have to be at the forefront of it i think for me if one positive hopefully fingers crossed that we can see or we hope to see with the au's inclusion as part of the g20 is that perhaps it might force the member states to come together speak together collectively on on certain issues so um i would basically food most of the responses on the constitutional question we know exactly what's needed a degree of institutional insulation at least for the constitutional court from political influence however how you make that happen and in senegal i think we should be careful because the case study is not only about the formal institutions but the informal institutions who helped negotiate this this transition process and um to what extent to those um to the bridges between the formal and the informal institutions actually contribute to consolidating democracy it's a key question that we need to ask about um the external influences i think it's important to raise the issue of the dotted line of subsidiarity and complementarity between the un and the au and the explicit subsidiarity between the au and the regional economy communities right um because those are different spaces within which um issues like good offices actually play a role um so we might need to also interrogate the extent to which the good offices have lately not been as effective as they needed to be in supporting civil society organizations or societies actually take the mantle of democracy in places where you had um sedimented regimes um the second observation um is more for question actually um if the Sudanese could rise up why not Uganda right if we had Egypt rise up against Mubarak um why not Cameroon so in fact these are all case specific right and at times we need to acknowledge our own intra societal weaknesses that do not allow us in fact to be able to form that internal contract that then builds into momentum against oppressive state oppressive government au question um i think it's important the au deserves support just as much as the in thinking through the reforms that would make them more effective take while cognizant of the context within which they are working and um you cannot throw the baby out with the bath water and um it's necessary to think through ways in which not just um civil society on the continent can get to a better understanding of what the au is and what the au does um because you'd be surprised the extent to which expectations are absolutely dissonant from not just the realities but the limited powers that the au has to act and um in that process we talk about lack of credibility of the au and the rex in the eyes of populations but a lot of the time um there needs to be a mutual engagement as well across those fronts so um i'd leave it at that for now thanks thank you and in the interest of getting more audience questions i'm gonna actually pause your closing remarks if y'all allow me to get some audience to talk more uh but i'm gonna ask that we keep the storytelling brief and make them questions please um kate and then wadi hi thank you so much um kate alexander from madre i want to return to the question of sudan because i think it raises an interesting question around the limitations of requesting us engagement when the us hasn't learned from or is willing to acknowledge harmful past engagement let alone adjust policy to prevent those harms from recurring i'm curious when it comes to sudan if there's an opportunity here for the us to learn about how to support transformative social movements in moments of transition and recommendations you would have for both the international community and the au in playing a role in maybe mitigating the relationship between actors like the us and um governments in moments of transition thanks kate wadi hi wadi mukange from madre i wanted to comment on um the role of france in francophone west africa because um there have been sort of you know conversations with regards to the prevalence of kus and the gentleman here talked to just for a minute about the role of the of western governments and perpetuating some of the oppression that we're seeing today and i think one of the clear examples of that is the role of france post colonial period which is deeply entrenched in its former colonies and is very much part of the reason that the young people have risen up and so i'm asking if there's any analysis about that from our panelists thank you i'll take one question back there thank you very much um omogo from igad just a quick uh a question that keep has been bothering me since we started the panel and i picked it from the five or so issues that fonte you raised about why kus do happen but i'm also thinking about i don't know what your reflection would be on what seems to be an emerging um popular um leaders or maybe over promising leaders because uh progressive we were seeing this emerging leaders that are more or less promising you heaven and i think uh the the informed uh population quickly realizes that those promises are not deliverable and then quickly you start realizing now a bit of anxiety between the the the people against um the the leader that was really promising will be heaven or not so i just i don't know what to a reflection would be because i think it is something that seems to be emerging especially in some sections of uh of the continent thank you thank you and i'll give moya the last question thank you kenya moya nyandi with open society foundations um to start off i am a strong believer in democracy uh but i love that qualifier where's this going yes uh i wanted to hear from the panelists what their thoughts are i think in an earlier panel we heard from yaki that africa adopted uh security models that are not necessarily tailored to the challenges that we have like hook line and sinker in terms of armies yet we don't necessarily need them um and this on naran democracy people have sort of like said the same thing in terms of africa are we not being naive in thinking that we can take the same trajectory in terms of building towards democracy given that uh older countries built their democracy without the question of social media and ai artificial intelligence i think we heard of um malawi not being able to defend its passport system from uh cyber cyber threat um you have corporations that have greater gdp than a lot of african countries we're listening to we're hearing of malayan actors uh influencing you know uh and the us has also been accused of you know picking and choosing leaders and so forth so this is the environment that africa has to build its democracy upon in comparison to older countries are we not being naive in thinking that um we can achieve the same thing despite these challenges that we have thank you those are all pretty varied questions i'm gonna have um oge and susan if you can take the question and the recommendations for us in light of sudan as well as the democracy in today's age um question uh joe and fonte uh have you take the one on the role of france as well as the over promising leaders uh susan do you want to start please delighted to um on sudan i would commend um some research and publications um that were done by some of my colleagues who were involved in uh supporting some of the movements prior to the revolution um the work that started around corruption and transparency and then reflected on how there was external engagement with those movements um in the period uh leading into the constitutional declaration uh and beyond uh i think i think it's an incredibly important and complex question set um and i think this this space to reflect on sudan is is really needed um i also think that it is a country that is facing a complete catastrophe and in this moment uh all of the attention uh to be focused on stopping the war ensuring that there is a humanitarian access to those who desperately need it to me that is the center of the conversation and where we need diplomats civil society uh americans um pushing uh to to avert the very worst that is that is already taking place um in that country um moe on the question of of democracy um in some of our programming uh we we can't have conversations about democracy we can't have conversations about good governance these are in countries impacted by kus um we make a decision we aren't forcing that why would we define what the topic of the conversation is um people can talk about social cohesion people can talk about their expectations of responsible governance and accountable governance um and so if it goes back to how does the us approach um yes the us articulates values in its foreign policy and hopefully it stands for those um but if it sits and insists on a word that can't be touched and that people don't feel safe talking about then i think we're actually undermining those who have the potential to divine a pathway forward um so i would i would agree i think there's a lot of space and discussion that's needed uh to define those pathways and then how partners engage on it thanks i'm on sudan just to add that i would probably add on a few um recent recommended recent publications from the wilson center that actually seek to try to answer the question on how we learn from lessons past and effectively engage citizen voices um in the in the ongoing discussions now to end the war in the country so i would recommend some of those policy briefs um for you now the question on democracy like you moya and i'm sure almost everyone else in this room were strong advocates for democracy i want to believe that that everyone here in this room is an advocate for democracy um but i think that sometimes we often get so stuck on the term and being stuck on the term in the way we talk about it has actually also given room to some on the continent who will say oh democracy why are they trying to bring western democracy to us but at the end of the day being able to have representative government being able to have service delivery effective service delivery that's good governance that's what it is so i think being able to frame the conversation that way and we see the framing in in those discussions too as well when citizens talk about it they just want better lives they want their governments to be able to represent that they want to see effective representative governance so we it's it's important that we don't get too stuck on that term and also realizing too as well that i i too agree with you that the trajectory for democratic development or the road towards consolidation of democracy would be different on the continent because the challenges that we face today are different every country will go through its different um a different pathway towards democratic consolidation there isn't a one size fits all and i think we have to be those in the room who are in democracy strengthening organizations i try to stay away from the term democracy promotion we're strengthening institutions that already exist that those who work in these organizations will take that in mind that there isn't a one size fits all and you know i think sometimes and this might be controversial for some when i think about West Africa and people talk about democracy backsliding in West Africa and i have to question sometimes and i say is it really backsliding or are people taking a different approach we see citizens fighting back to us to authoritarian governments we see what just went what just happened in Senegal so things are a little different so based on our definition how do we define democracy backsliding so this gives us an opportunity to even interrogate this um further so yes the pathways will be different we have to understand that the challenges that we face on the continent today um every country will have a different um will follow a different path towards um uh democratic consolidation so there isn't one size that fits all and yeah thank you uh joe and Fonte briefly address the role of France and then um over promising leaders right um so again in terms of analysis what we got data shown is you know the influence of France has actually tinted the image of the West in general so i talk about people's attitudes towards France and the attraction to China the attraction to the Chinese or the China model in terms of development is much stronger in the Francophone region and we think that is because of the role of France it's more seen as this is a Westing example and we would rather go the China way so the analysis are sure that there's that shift towards China as opposed to you know the West um populist leaders well i think that is also one of the reasons we see in these um the celebration of militaries and on the streets because they they are the most trusted i should say data show the military is the most trusted democratic institution on the continent for sure and wherever you go there's no counter where the military is not at the top in terms of trust you know parliaments are down there and the military is always at the top and so the trust in the discipline of the military there's a sense of a disciplined institution that is what citizens want can we have a disciplined institution that actually oversees the governance of the country and sometimes you may see that those kinds of reactions so we make a distinction between military intervention and military rule if they are not the same so people may want intervention but they don't want the military rule and so that's not the distinction to me but the final point on democracy i do think you know talk of democracy there are different components to think about accountability responsiveness the institutions we ask all about all of these and people's commitments to those institutions is very strong and so it's not just the word democracy but it's the institutions that actually anchor this democratic governance and i think on the african continent when people say african needs a different dimension i don't think there's anything like a different democracy democracy has always been the west form of government for sure but it is what people really want that they can hold their government their people like governments accountable and that they are responsive to their needs i think that's not something that anybody should want anyway so joe has spoken to sort of what the data says from the citizens we look more at the actions of the transitional authorities who came in through kus and not by any means elected therefore questionable legitimacy and not very accountable equally to the population right and what we see is the transfer of dependencies so yes you could blame friends for the dependent relationships which fostered on the development but there's no clear indication that the choices of new partners is actually driving towards an emancipatory agenda the second is there is we cannot see a shift in responding to the structural challenges i'll take one one simple case in point there was a point at which some government in this hell accused friends of putting a moratorium on engaging through dialogue with terrorist groups since the military came to power how many dialogues have we seen and with terrorist groups to deliver the kind of negotiated solutions to the terror to the violent extremist crisis the third is the question of delivery of public services i mean that doesn't change as well so in fact what is the pathway what is the vision that's driving this grasp for power by the bama ko oh sorry this central based military elite it's a key question and beyond friends being an enemy there is equally a koas which occasionally is an enemy and almost everyone else so there is a way in which the narrative that's structured is one which basically raises external demons to whip up a sudo patriotism and that prolongs a transitional government and in some countries we are seeing going to their fourth and fifth years and the second and that ties in to the overpromising the the challenge we find is not in the promises that are made it's in the information that undergirds these promises which okay in more often than not are not very accurate um not just in the interpretation of previous luminaries who led the country but also in the articulation of what the real dynamics are so i think we need to be careful when we interpret those and of course it's just a matter of time before the promises come to you the checks come to you and that would certainly create if we don't kind of learn lessons from previous transitions that inform the way in which we could engage with these new transitional actors what would happen when the checks come to be paid is that or to be cashed is that we would we would move into another cycle of instability so it's a post that we need to engage with thank you thank you rather than attempt a summary where the where between you guys and the reception so i'm going to wrap this up for you all to make sure that can happen but i would do what i think the panel this has been for me a very insightful conversation so i really appreciate all the things that you've brought in and the various back and forth that we've had whether or not they it's been fun thank you i really enjoyed it thank you and as we conclude i do hope that these conversations continue i think today was a very long day for several of you thank you for all of you who stayed from nine a.m. and are still here and those of you who came later as well thank you for being part of this these conversations are important we say that africa matters not just because we think it matters but because it has to be part of the conversation and so the reason we do these kinds of summits is because we want to make sure that us government african union all these institutions are having these conversations and these folks all of you here are the reasons why that needs to continue and it's these voices that we need to be entering into the conversation so thank you um i want to make a specific thank you to the folks who helped make this happen so the organizers the iss usip hu and osf who've helped make this happen today thank you all but specifically i want to thank uh the folk the tech team who is back there who've been there the whole day thank you all um uh from usip aya and bilay thank you so much i please stand so people can see who you are from hu uh sabiha ayaan aila annie and abby who's left the room please stand so you can recognize and from uh iss uh judy is not here but thank you to judy who was here and osf moya thank you for all the work that you did to help us make this happen yes uh and last but not least this is our second year of doing this this is maria kisumbi's idea uh two years ago and this is something that we're doing for the second year so thank you maria for thank you all and enjoy the reception