Until the creation of NERC, the Ebola response suffered from a lack of national ownership and coordination. In the first few months, it might be the case that in one district there would be six different outfits, predominantly international organisations, working on social mobilisation messaging and in the neighbouring district there would be none. In addition, two-thirds of those organisations would be using messages that had not been approved by government. These messages, which highlighted the deadly nature of the disease and the absence of a cure, intended to promote protective behaviours, but had the opposite effect. With the understanding that death was inevitable, many chose to eschew hospitals and receive care at home from friends and family, who then themselves were infected. The whole social messaging exercise was happening without clear direction from government about what the messages should be, who should deliver them, how – and whether – it was altering public attitudes and behaviour. The lack of strategic national leadership was glaring.

After the creation of NERC (see Figure 1), a daily morning briefing was instituted, but problems persisted. Everybody involved in the response, from civil society to NGOs to journalists, attended. Meetings went on for several hours while people pontificated and held forth with speeches. This was supposed to be an incident management centre that provided brief updates on the current situation. NERC was not an expert Ebola-fighting organisation. Its function was to provide command, control and direction so that the Ebola fighters, the experts, could do their job most effectively. These elongated meetings were not helping it do this. But there was a more fundamental problem.

At that time, the Operation Gritrock people – the British-led military taskforce sent to assist the Ebola response, the UK’s DFID, and the local British High Commission officials – convened their own meetings, where they got their own data and reports from the field and decided what they would do next. As the government’s primary partner, both during the crisis and in development assistance, the UK view had a great deal of clout, but it was not being conveyed in a very transparent way. There was also a regular donor partners’ meeting where a common position was discussed. In fact, the only group that were not having separate meetings to discuss their position were Sierra Leoneans. Following internal discussions at NERC, I took the advice of my team to Maj. (Rtd) Paolo Conteh, the chief executive officer of NERC, and suggested replacing the daily morning briefings with twice-weekly Command Group meetings and follow-up Coordination Group meetings.

By owning the management of the response, Sierra Leoneans demonstrated their commitment to tackling Ebola; and by allowing them to do so, the donors demonstrated confidence in the ability of nationals to own it

The Command Group meeting would comprise Sierra Leoneans only.³ The Coordination Group would comprise members of the Command Group plus international partners.⁴ Purely Sierra Leonean matters would be discussed in the Command Group meetings and the following day, once a position had been agreed, the donor partners would be involved. Everyone was allowed to offer their opinion, but the final decision was to be taken by Maj. Conteh.

In the beginning, we got a lot of pushback from international partners who felt that we were locking them out of the decision-making process. This was not the intention and quickly this became obvious, but not before we had to make a few points about sovereignty and the importance of Sierra Leone having its ducks in a row before engaging with others. In fact, this system gave partners a formal mechanism to influence decision-making, whereas previously they had to rely on the strength of their bilateral relationships. Even recalcitrant NGOs gradually came round to seeing the benefits of having a central body they could direct questions to, raise concerns with and demand answers from.

The approach created a more inclusive environment, which allowed all those involved to have their say on the direction of the response; and it placed the ultimate decision-making in the hands of national, not international, leaders. The collegiate approach adopted – one that allowed everyone to have their input, share their concerns and outline their capabilities – gradually transformed the way the response was discussed. From “the British government will do this” and “WHO will do this”, it became “NERC will do this”. This singular voice was very important. By owning the management of the response, Sierra Leoneans demonstrated their commitment to tackling Ebola; and by allowing them to do so, the donors demonstrated confidence in the ability of nationals to own it.

BACK TO CONTENTS

In November 2014, six months after the first case of Ebola in the country, there was still no Sierra Leonean organisation undertaking comprehensive, nationwide data collection about the spread of the virus. Decision-making at government level was reliant on data provided by external actors. UNMEER and WHO, for example, were reluctant to share what they had with the government and each other. This meant that on any given day the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, CDC and WHO would have different figures for the number of Ebola cases that had been recorded.

To address the coverage, control and quality of information, a working group was established by NERC in November 2014, comprising all domestic and international stakeholders involved in the response and collecting data. In the initial meetings, it was agreed to reduce the number of key indicators that we needed to collect data on from 150 to 40. These included everything from the number of people dead to the number of social mobilisation messages disseminated. We agreed to have core indicators around infections, deaths and so forth, and who was to collect what. This was driven by a belief that “the only chain that matters is the chain of transmission”, so any data collected had to be shared with others on the ground before being disseminated to Geneva, London or anywhere else these agencies had their headquarters. Of course, we didn’t achieve this in the fullest sense, but by harmonising collection we managed to establish a “ground truth” on data – everyone was working on the same set of numbers collected by different organisations doing different things. It was important in that it allowed NERC to take evidence-based decisions, using figures that all stakeholders agreed upon.

Establishing the ground truth gave people confidence that reported Ebola case numbers in specific locations were correct. When questions were brought to our attention about a possible mis-diagnosis, we made it a priority to investigate. If it was found that an incorrect blood sample had been used, we would ask the head of the Ministry of Health’s laboratories – to whom all labs in the country, local and foreign, reported – to explain to the public on the radio, TV and in town hall meetings where necessary, that it was a wrong diagnosis and why the error had happened. If a medical explanation was needed, a health professional was asked to explain – in layman’s language – the reasoning for the discrepancy. Our approach was designed to be transparent, honest and not condescending.

NERC tried to overcome this inherent distrust of the centre by committing to transparency and opening itself up to external scrutiny

For many Sierra Leoneans, mistrust of the government is driven by their own experiences and interactions with the state, which often leave them less than satisfied. NERC tried to overcome this inherent distrust of the centre by committing to transparency and opening itself up to external scrutiny. We held a weekly press conference, created a website where all the analysis of the Situation Room briefings and data were published, and provided a room for the press within the NERC campus, with internet and printing facilities. We even started putting our quarterly financial reports online. This allowed people to see who cheques were being issued to, for what reason, and the amounts. We were able to do this by working closely with a team from the Office of the Auditor General, which carried out a real-time audit of our financial operations.⁵

Owning up to your mistakes, being open about the problems you face, and trying to explain how you intend to fix them is important for building trust. This is what NERC tried to do. Except for the initial phase of the response, when people did not trust government at all, we were able to bring the population along with us. Sierra Leone did not experience demonstrations against the government, like in Liberia, or fatal attacks on health care workers, as happened in Guinea.

BACK TO CONTENTS

The slow nature of the international response to Ebola has been well documented. When it was underway, a large majority of those working on the ground demonstrated extraordinary commitment and dedication, alongside Sierra Leoneans. However, there was still a lot of “disaster tourism” going on. International NGOs were bringing in people with qualifications that bore no relation to the terms of reference you see when you try and apply for jobs on their websites. These individuals were given astronomical salaries for a six-week period and then left, often without any proper handover to their replacement. The new arrival would then put their hand up in a meeting and be like, “I am from Geneva, I have all of the answers.” They would make you waste an hour of a meeting by bringing up things that had been discussed, examined and dismissed four months ago. I had a problem with that.

I also had a problem with the way donors handled funds that had been committed to the response. They did not behave in a way that suggested the funds were for the countries affected by Ebola. It was as if it was their own largesse, which we had to ask them politely for. In that, there was an implicit questioning of Sierra Leoneans honesty, ability and knowledge, which I found condescending.

The £43m treatment centre built at Kerry Town with British funding was emblematic of some of these problems.6 The idea was that the 100-bed facility would provide confidence to other countries to send their health care workers to support overwhelmed Sierra Leonean and international staff. Incredibly, at the start they considered building a facility that would not accept Sierra Leonean patients. Fortunately, they saw sense on that, but Kerry Town was just an expensive gesture that has done nothing to address long-term, systemic problems in Sierra Leone’s health system. If you go and visit it now, there is nothing but a few abandoned structures, and yet our hospitals and medical facilities remain underequipped to provide basic levels of care. At the same time, the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces converted facilities such as the 34 Military Hospital, in Freetown, into effective treatment centres, at greater speed and a fraction of the cost. In February 2015, less than three months after it opened, over 800 Ebola patients had been treated there.⁷

As both a taxpaying British citizen and a Sierra Leonean, I would really like to understand the reasoning and decision-making behind spending £43 million on a project that appears to have so few long-term benefits. It’s a sum equivalent to our entire government budget for health in 2017.⁸ The money could, and should, have done so much for Sierra Leone’s health sector.

BACK TO CONTENTS

At the start, the lock, stock message was that if you had Ebola you were going to die: there was no cure. This drove people away from treatment facilities and into the hands of traditional healers. Even though they had been banned from practising, this was the reality. So we adapted our strategy to bring them on board. Educating traditional healers about the sort of symptoms a patient who has Ebola might show, and encouraging them to share that information with medical personnel and NERC, meant that they became an effective early warning system. Instead of trying to coerce the public, we sought to use these pre-existing local structures to both educate and inform at chiefdom level. To be able to change people’s behaviour, you need to speak to them in a language they understand and see things from their worldview. NERC’s leadership was made up of people who understood these cultural nuances. It was about shifting the onus.

Instead of saying the government is coming to fix the problem for you, we wanted local leaders to resolve the problem with our support. It was not lost on us that the districts that were able to contain Ebola first, places like Pujehun and Kailahun, had been able to do so before NERC was formed. They succeeded by using social structures and networks that were well established in the local community. We very quickly realised that it would be more effective to hand power to the people; we had to decentralise the way NERC operated. In many parts of the country, government only works by the grace and support of traditional powers.

In late 2014, District Ebola Response Centres (DERCs) headed by a coordinator and directly answerable to NERC were created. These were the district-level equivalent of NERC, but designed to be more adaptable to the local context. Up until that point, the entire response was being coordinated from Freetown when the majority of cases were in the eastern districts of Kenema and Kailahun. That was a mistake. A person on the ground in Kenema had a much better sense of how to respond to the outbreak and the DERC enabled them to get on and do it.

It was not lost on us that the districts that were able to contain Ebola first, places like Pujehun and Kailahun, had been able to do so before NERC was formed

The balance we sought was to find a way to decentralise responsibility and power, whilst ensuring accountability was retained – “accountability” in the sense that, if Ebola was getting out of control in a district, NERC could liaise with one person to give them an account of what was going on, what was needed and the support they required. It was not about accountability for the purpose of apportioning blame. Handing power away from the centre made a big difference.

BACK TO CONTENTS

NERC tried to start a culture change in the way government business is done and accounted for in the name of citizens in Sierra Leone. Lesson-learning was ingrained into NERC’s DNA. Every time a new operation began, indicators were established against which the success of the project could be measured. For example, when a village was quarantined, data would be gathered on how many people were fed and what medical equipment was needed. Close monitoring of our operations was followed by periods of lesson-learning. It did not stop there.

Mechanisms were introduced to take the lessons learned and apply them to future interventions. For example, we had several instances of people who had been exposed to Ebola victims escaping from quarantine and starting new infection hotspots elsewhere. Whilst we improved security, started tracing mobile phone calls and taking other measures to reduce the chances of escape, we also started to ask ourselves why someone facing the risk of a terminal illness would run from us when the whole reason we were isolating them was to be able to help them if they fell ill. The answer lay in the way we were doing the isolation, in recognising our failure to reassure people about their loved ones we had taken into treatment and other logistical issues around their welfare. We changed quarantine protocols and improved the service. Fewer people ran after those changes.

If we could defeat Ebola, why could we not get the basics of running a country – roads, hospitals and schools – right?

To build resilience in a system, you have expose it to problems. For each problem you find, recalibrate that system so that it prevents it from happening again, or highlight it immediately so you can take direct remedial action. At NERC we hunted problems, whereas the norm in Sierra Leone is to try and cover them up. This is because our political economy is set up to feed patronage networks, and not with continuity and transparency in mind. I would like to think that NERC’s successful approach to fighting Ebola has prompted deep introspection within government circles in Sierra Leone. If we could defeat Ebola, why could we not get the basics of running a country – roads, hospitals and schools – right?

At the end, we oversaw a comprehensive review of NERCs operations.⁹ President Koroma chaired the meeting where the findings were presented and was very keen that this new way of doing business – convergence to excellence, reliance on local structures, decentralisation of power, an open system of accountability and responsibility, a culture of problem-solving and not finger-pointing, and evidence-based policymaking – be adopted into the President’s Recovery Priorities (PRPs).¹⁰ So far, there have been some positive initial signs of continuity.

Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, director of planning at NERC, is now the delivery team lead for implementation of the PRPs. I see this continuity as a conscious and explicit effort by the government to absorb the commitment to evidence-based policymaking and rigorous monitoring and evaluation we championed at NERC. There are very clear timelines put in place for when PRP activities should be complete. People who are accountable for ensuring that happens are known and named; and Sierra Leoneans are informed of what to expect and what role they can play. There are also efforts to ensure greater interaction with, and support for, communities and community-led initiatives, both at the design and implementation stages. The PRP’s creation of chieftaincy engagement officers is one example of an effort to replicate the kind of granular accountability we instilled at NERC.

In October 2016, the country held its first-ever national accountability forum aimed at enforcing improved service delivery. But I am realistic. We did not change the culture with this one initiative, nor can you even say that it has been embedded until two or three similar initiatives emerge and do well. It will be a slow and tortuous process.

BACK TO CONTENTS

The key thing to remember about NERC is that no one was an Ebola expert. We were all learning as we went along – we never had the attitude that we already had the answers. Instead, the approach was to establish a set of guiding principles, to commit to excellence and to embrace the problems we encountered, not run away from them.

One of the first issues I confronted after joining NERC was concern about management of the fleet of vehicles involved in the response: drivers syphoning fuel from tanks or coming to work drunk, and the fact that many of the vehicles had broken down. When I asked for a list of all vehicles that had been bought or donated to the country to fight Ebola, for their fuel forecasts and maintenance schedules, none were forthcoming because they did not exist.

A fleet management system was established to ensure vehicles were properly maintained. Very strict controls were established about who could drive the vehicles, licensing procedures were tightened up, regular spot checks were introduced and a detailed record of each vehicle’s movements was kept, using their unique engine numbers. This system inspired confidence among international donors and gradually they committed funds to ensure that all vehicles being used to tackle Ebola had free maintenance and fuel.

Government cannot force policies down the throats of people, even when it is for their own good

Some strategies could have been better thought through or executed. We could have organised the payment system for health care workers and burial teams better. Even though NERC has been commended for the way it used IT to quickly solve a major problem, it was not as efficient as it could have been. People still went unpaid for far too long. Our social mobilisation messaging could also have been handled better, especially at the start of the outbreak. We could have dealt with quarantine better. It improved towards the end, but for a time it was not as nuanced as it should have been. We did not identify potential contacts outside the home well enough, and failed to provide sufficient welfare supplies on time to those in quarantine. We tried to learn from our mistakes and improve. We did not hide from them.

We had to innovate a great deal. For example, we faced a problem whenever a chief or someone powerful in a traditional secret society died – especially in the rural areas. These societies have ceremonies and rites they perform, but we were insisting on people being buried with full contamination protection and only by our well-protected and trained burial teams. So, to avoid our surveillance, they started burying at night. The women did the same. Our teams started finding fresh graves in villages, with chiefs swearing they knew nothing. The easy option would have been to arrest them for violating the emergency laws on handling corpses we had put in place. Instead, we took our time to understand why they were doing secret burials. Once we found out, we decided to train members of male and female secret societies into burial teams. That way they could follow their traditions and be safe. Reports of secret burials declined significantly. The innovation here was working with the people. Instead of getting carried away with blindly enforcing the rules, we tried to understand why they were breaking them in the first place. Lesson: government cannot force policies down the throats of people, even when it is for their own good.

BACK TO CONTENTS

Working at NERC made me more hopeful for the country. The advent of the virus revealed the worst in some Sierra Leoneans, showing us that there were people who were willing to enrich themselves while their fellow citizens died for lack of resources and to shun others in need. It highlighted our lack of leadership, accountability and social responsibility in some areas. At the same time, it revealed things that I had never before seen in my country. I have never seen people come together in the way they did. I have never seen young people take such control in solving a major problem facing their country. I have never seen the level of convergence to excellence that I saw at NERC, because Ebola did not allow people to take shortcuts.

The fact that predominantly young Sierra Leoneans demonstrated they could work collaboratively to such high standards, and generate their own best practice ideas without everything being handed to them on a plate by some foreign “expert”, gives me a huge amount of hope for the future

When I arrived at the Situation Room, my staff included junior Sierra Leonean civil servants, highly trained and professional Sierra Leonean and British military officers, and staff from the UN and a number of NGOs. The most important of these was the African Governance Initiative, which supported us with several highly capable analysts and advisers at no cost to the government. I partnered up all my Sierra Leonean staff with their more experienced international colleagues and started a training programme in the Situation Room – in the middle of the crisis! This programme developed into the Situation Room Academy.

By the time we closed NERC in January 2016, the Academy had trained – at NERC and in the field – over 1,000 people in data analysis and software tools. We established a Situation Room Mapping Service, which produced maps for everyone – including the UN and British military, who had been making maps for us. We supported a mapping course at Njala University. In the beginning, I had relied on foreign staff to do most of the high-level analysis. By the end, we had only one foreign staff member in the Situation Room. We achieved these things because I was lucky to have a group of highly dedicated and hardworking Sierra Leonean staff who were committed to doing their best, and international colleagues who were committed to passing on their skills as they helped us fight. This was not just at NERC. It happened everywhere in the field. Nurses, doctors, disease surveillance officers, social mobilisers, lab technicians, blood sample collectors and others working with NGOs, learned lessons from their own experiences and demonstrated their ability to match the exacting standards required to fight Ebola.

BACK TO CONTENTS

Figure 1: The National Ebola Response Centre, 2015

When I was appointed to chair INEC in July 2010, I joined an organisation that was perceived to be fraudulent and corrupt. It was also inefficient in executing its mandate. At the same time I was entering a moving vehicle, with no time to reflect and reform effectively. An unorthodox methodology was needed. I was able to bring in a team of INEC outsiders, paid for by the United Nations Development Programme. These were people I could trust and who – independent of INEC’s bureaucracy – could help map a blueprint for institutional reform. For example, Professor Okechukuwu Ibeanu became my chief technical adviser, Professor M J Kuna my special assistant and Dr Magaji Mahmoud my chief of staff.⁸

One of the first issues that had to be addressed was the register of voters. It lacked integrity. There was a lot of data missing for people who were registered and there was clear evidence of fictitious names. We had names of trees, of rivers, and international figures like Mike Tyson and Queen Elizabeth II! There was a debate between those who thought the register could be cleaned up and those who thought it should be jettisoned and replaced. Internal discussions with key personnel in the technical departments revealed the scale of the problem: a complete overhaul was needed, but the general election was scheduled for January 2011, just seven months away.

To compile a new register of voters, INEC needed a constitutional amendment to shift the election date and significant resources to carry out a good, credible registration. Engagement with the government was very positive. The constitutional amendment was quickly secured and elections were pushed back to April 2011. President Goodluck Jonathan also arranged a meeting for INEC with key ministers and the leadership of the National Assembly, at which we were able to present our case and funding needs. In outlining the funding needs, we made the argument that we had been appointed to oversee credible elections, the foundation for which was a credible register of voters. What we had seen was not a credible register and with it we could not hold credible elections. We secured the necessary resources, a sum approximately double INEC’s 2010 budget submission.⁹

Development partners, who felt a review of the register was a more feasible option given the limited time frame, were sceptical. But we were determined to deliver a new, biometric register, and requested them to provide support rather than assume that it could not be done. The experience of Bangladesh, a country with quite similar demographics to Nigeria in terms of the number of registered voters, provided a template for what could be done. They had compiled a biometric register for a national identification card that was to be subsequently used for electoral purposes in eight months. In Nigeria, we only had three.

In Bangladesh the process moved from region to region, but our approach – vastly more expensive, but also much faster – was to deploy registration equipment at every one of the country’s 120,000 or so polling stations concurrently. The decision was taken not to use integrated handheld registration devices. Instead, laptops with add-ons to capture the necessary data – cameras and fingerprint scanners – were preferred. This meant that if one part failed it could be quickly replaced. Learning from 2007, when INEC was held to ransom by external vendors who demanded exorbitant fees for their products and services, young Nigerian engineers were brought in to develop in-house registration software.

With resilience, determination, good planning and the support of key stakeholders, we had successfully created a new register in just three months, a task that many people thought impossible

Voter registration was designed to happen over a period of two weeks. During the first few days challenges with the fingerprint scanners were encountered and many people were asked to come back and re-register. Despite this setback, within three weeks – one week more than planned – we had a register of 73.5 million voters, all issued with a temporary voter card. Using the fingerprint identification system, 870,000 multiple registrations were subsequently removed.

The register was still not perfect. Time constraints limited searches to local government areas, meaning that cross-state duplications were not addressed. Nonetheless, with resilience, determination, good planning and the support of key stakeholders, we had successfully created a new register in just three months, a task that many people thought impossible.

Ahead of the 2015 elections, efforts were made to forge a closer working relationship with the National Population Commission (NPC), the body mandated with compiling national statistics of births and deaths and with undertaking the long-awaited census.¹⁰ Unfortunately, the increasingly politicised NPC proved difficult to work with, but with partial support from their staff and INEC resources some progress was made. A further four million names were removed, primarily through de-duplication.

“Off-season”¹¹ elections provide an opportunity to test logistical and technical measures and fine-tune them ahead of a general election. They draw the attention of the nation to one state and political parties deploy considerable resources in these contests. In the Nigerian context, where elections are seen as “do-or-die” affairs, this makes them very challenging.

We gained invaluable experience for the 2015 elections in the gubernatorial elections in Anambra (2013), Osun (2014) and Ekiti (2014). In Anambra, the misuse – or abuse – of temporary voter cards, and the way in which politicians tried to manipulate the new register of voters in connivance with some electoral officials at the state level, was clear to all. This pushed us to accelerate the production and distribution of permanent voter cards (PVCs) that were chip-based, making them much harder to replicate, and to reaffirm the need for electronic card readers. The Ekiti gubernatorial election in June 2014 was the testing ground for the PVCs and they worked well.

BACK TO CONTENTS

In President Yar’Adua’s inauguration address in May 2007, there was an acknowledgement that the election which brought him to power was fraught with irregularities. It is generally regarded as Nigeria’s worst election. The creation of the JUERC marked the start of a period of reform. In 2007–2008, the 22 members of the committee, of which I was one, traversed Nigeria meeting with stakeholders, experts and local communities to gather information and ideas for reforming Nigeria’s electoral system and laws.

The JUERC’s 2008 report¹² expanded awareness of the challenges of holding elections in Nigeria and paved the way for creating a general consensus on the need for reforms of the electoral process. By my estimates, 80% of the report’s proposals were incorporated into the Electoral Act, 2010. One change particularly beneficial to INEC was the legal protection of financial support: the committee recommended that INEC should be funded using the first line charge and that it should be protected from executive interference. This has significantly helped to ensure the relative autonomy of INEC.

The administration of Goodluck Jonathan, president from 2010 to 2015, never gave any reason to suspect that there was a deliberate and wilful attempt to emasculate the funding of INEC. For this they should be applauded. No situation arose where we had to go cap-in-hand to the executive looking for funding and I must add that when supplementary funding was needed it was nearly always forthcoming. For most of the time during our tenure, President Jonathan tried not to personally interfere with the Commission’s work. Only in the run-up to the 2015 election did his government and ruling political party seek to interfere with the decision of INEC to use electronic card readers. We were able to remind them that they had supported the idea and funded it. Overall I think that President Jonathan meant well for democracy in our country, a view strengthened by the gracious way he conceded electoral defeat in 2015.

As far as the situation I found at INEC was concerned, personal experience has taught me that inclusiveness works in improving governance and performance. Listening to all perspectives before taking a final decision promotes stability in the system, and improves efficiency and effectiveness in the discharge of responsibilities. Knowing the enormous challenges that are associated with the conduct of elections in Nigeria, this kind of open, transparent and inclusive approach was necessary at INEC.

JUERC’s 2008 report expanded awareness of the challenges of holding elections in Nigeria and paved the way for creating a general consensus on the need for reforms of the electoral process

I set the example in terms of complying with the electoral legal framework and made it clear that all INEC staff – about 16,000 by 2015 – were expected to do the same. Incentive mechanisms were designed to go alongside punishments for transgressions. The objective was to force out those who were incompetent, and inspire and motivate those who had been, and were still, doing good work. We ensured that all staff had life insurance and 13-month salaries were paid. We stressed that we were not going to dig into historic accusations when we created a transparent disciplinary process, with the opportunity for redress if false accusations were made. We wanted to be seen as fair, yet upholding the law. About 80% of INEC staff in 2011 and 2015 were the same people who conducted the 2007 elections, yet the quality of these two elections was very different.

At the institutional level, an unbundling of INEC’s administrative functions was needed. After the 2011 elections a management consultancy firm was brought in to review internal processes. From 53 departments when I arrived, the Commission now has 19, and in the restructuring process the roles and responsibilities of each department were clearly spelt out and shared across the organisation to avoid duplication.

BACK TO CONTENTS

In the first decade after Nigeria’s return to multiparty democracy in 1999, multiple voting had been perfected by politicians. People, organised in gangs, would move from one polling station to another, voting at each. So I thought long and hard with colleagues at INEC about how to tackle this problem. The conclusion we reached was that, in addition to the distribution of PVCs and electronic card readers, we needed to create a situation on election day where the movement of people between polling units was curtailed.
The idea of creating new polling stations was also put forward ahead of the 2015 vote. Due to Nigeria’s rapidly growing population, many of the 120,000 polling stations are overwhelmed. For example, certain Lagos polling stations have to deal with as many as 4,000 voters. We were able to create a framework for collaboration with the National Boundary Commission and the Office of the Surveyor-General; and we were able to create a technical working group to look at constituency delimitation. Through that collaboration, we were able to create maps and get information about population settlements, which helped us to develop more sophisticated means of developing the framework for creating new constituencies. Regrettably, this could not be actioned. In Nigeria, we are still dependent on projections based on the previous census. But we were able to establish 158,000 voting points: some polling stations were divided into two or even three, based on surnames, to make the whole operation more feasible.

The MOSBS was adapted from an approach employed by the electoral commission in 1993, under the stewardship of Professor Humphrey Nwosu. On election day in 2015, just as was the case in 2011, there were two phases involved in voting. Accreditation of voters on the register took place between 8.00am and 12 noon. Accredited voters formed a queue to cast their ballot and at 12.30pm voting commenced. When everyone in the queue had voted the polls closed. What this system achieved was that by 12.30pm anybody accredited to vote would be in his or her polling unit. People were denied the opportunity to vote in one place and then move elsewhere to do so again. It also acted as a deterrent against ballot box stuffing: politicians and thugs could no longer use periods of lull to stuff or snatch ballot boxes. If they wanted to do anything, it would have to be brazen and obvious, in full view of a queue of voters. In 2015, transparency at the polling unit level was very good. Party agents were accredited, observers given access, votes counted in view of the electorate, and copies of signed result sheets were given to all key actors and posted to the outside of polling stations.

In the first decade after Nigeria’s return to multiparty democracy in 1999, multiple voting had been perfected by politicians

MOSBS is not a perfect system. Although it reduced voting irregularities some individuals who were accredited did not subsequently vote.¹³ In gubernatorial elections since 2015, INEC has sought to address this by merging the stages of accreditation and voting. In Ondo and Rivers [states], voters were accredited and cast their ballots concurrently, but in Rivers the period of lull issue raised its head again, with reports emerging of people involved in ballot box stuffing and snatching.

Of greater concern to us was the collation and movement of results from the polling station to the federal level.¹⁴ In 2015, INEC sought to ensure that all the results sheets from polling units and wards at local government authority (LGA) level were scanned and uploaded to a database. Soon after the election, this resource was made available to the public. It enabled voters to check the results sheets they had seen in their polling station with the final ones submitted at the LGA level. There have been a few cases where discrepancies were noted, but for the most part contestations have been few and far between. I am confident the 2015 election results were credible.

BACK TO CONTENTS

Operating in a country that lacks the domestic manufacturing capacity to produce sufficient ballot papers, results sheets and other materials for an election is a sizeable challenge. We have to use suppliers from outside the country and this has knock-on effects. In 2007, politics got involved and INEC gave the ballot paper contract to the national printing company, an entity under the Presidency. Sub-contracts to external suppliers had to be issued, but even so some went unfulfilled. There were ballot papers still awaiting collection in South Africa in 2010.

The issue of PVCs for the general election in 2015 was also compromised by the slow pace of production and distribution. By the time of the elections only 82% of registered voters had received their PVCs. That might be an A grade in any exam, but those who did not get their cards could legitimately argue that they were being disenfranchised.

INEC is not tasked with solving Nigeria’s manufacturing and infrastructure deficiencies, but like all Nigerians we experience them and creative solutions have to be found

In 2011 and 2015, international contractors were again used in order for INEC to adhere to the constitutionally mandated time frame for the elections. Printing of ballot papers and results sheets has to wait for the completion of the nomination process and this often leaves no more than two weeks for production. This would be almost impossible in Nigeria, even using additional external suppliers. In 2011, the vote still had to be postponed by a week because of a shortage of results sheets. They had only been delivered to three of the country’s six geopolitical zones by polling day. In order to defend the integrity of the vote, I took personal responsibility for the decision to delay. The contractor claimed that because of a tsunami in Japan, aircraft were being diverted to deliver emergency relief supplies and so were unavailable to deliver our election materials. When you lack the capacity to control the process internally you are at the whim of external suppliers and world events.

Learning from these experiences, in 2015 we were even more rigorous in the appointment of contractors. For example, suppliers who caused the delay in 2011 were blacklisted and we sought to bring more of the components under INEC’s direct control. A state-of-the-art graphic design centre was established with the support of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems to enable the design of ballot papers to be brought in-house. It was then a case of sending print-ready versions to international contractors, a streamlined process that brought improved results and enabled deadlines to be met.

INEC is not tasked with solving Nigeria’s manufacturing and infrastructure deficiencies, but like all Nigerians we experience them and creative solutions have to be found.

BACK TO CONTENTS

Nigeria requires close to 750,000 temporary workers to support the conduct of general elections. Before my time at INEC, civil servants from the respective states were called on. It had become clear that state governments had a strong influence over these individuals and this was compromising the integrity of the electoral process. The 2011 voter registration was the first time NYSC members were used. The response to this innovation was positive. NYSC postings involve individuals spending a year working somewhere other than their state of origin. They were therefore perceived by the electorate as being insulated from local politics and more independent. Ahead of the election in April 2011 the relationship between INEC and NYSC was formalised by the signing of a memorandum of understanding. This included a commitment to paying particular attention to the welfare and security of corpers. Such a commitment now applies for all ad hoc INEC staff as Nigeria’s electoral environment can be very violent. Still, risks remain and I must pay special tribute to the nine NYSC members who died in post-election violence in Bauchi and Niger [states] in 2011.

Around half of INEC’s temporary staff came from NYSC in 2011 and 2015. They were complemented by students in the final year of tertiary education, and professors, vice-chancellors and other university staff. I chose to call on academic staff because of public perceptions about their impartiality and my own personal connections with academic unions. I was able to persuade them that just because the task at hand might look like a soiled pond did not mean they had to come out dirty. In the past, the INEC local staff were in charge of counting and announcing results. Accusations abounded that votes could be bought or made to disappear because of their connection to the community. In fact, an investigation I conducted in 2010 revealed that a very few bad eggs had given INEC a bad name in this regard; but we decided it was for the best to insulate Commission staff from sensitive roles. They remained in charge of logistical arrangements, but temporary staff acted as presiding officers in polling stations, announcing and returning results.

For people to be contributing to the integrity of an election at the expense of their own participation is not something that should continue

The use of the NYSC during the 2011 and 2015 elections not only improved electoral integrity but increased the participation of youth in Nigeria’s electoral process. They are now involved with further engagements relating to civic education and community sensitisation. Their presence and conduct was commended widely by international and domestic observers. However, after 2011 a young female corper from Lagos wrote to me, as chair of the Commission, to say that whilst she was very happy to serve in the election and it was wonderful experience, she had been denied the opportunity to vote for the first time as a consequence of working for INEC. Ahead of 2015, we tried to design a mechanism that would enable those involved in the running of the election to do so, but unfortunately we were unable to put the measures in place. In Nigeria, there is a perception that early voting will be compromised. We need to find a balance here because the security agencies are also unable to vote. In Ghana, early voting is possible and we must follow suit. For people to be contributing to the integrity of an election at the expense of their own participation is not something that should continue.

BACK TO CONTENTS

I think that democracy has come to stay in Nigeria. There is a growing desire for improvements, in spite of the mindset of politicians. Getting elections right is a good way of deepening democracy in the country, by strengthening the right of the people to be involved in governance and in the selection of those mandated to govern.

Previously, the voting process was so fraudulent that people were losing hope. They were asking, “What is the point when my vote does not count?” Since 2015 – the first time in Nigerian history that an opposition candidate defeated the incumbent president at the ballot box – attitudes have begun to shift. People are now increasingly aware of their ability to choose who to vote in and who to vote out. As more and more come to appreciate this, the mindset of politicians will be forced to shift. In the past, many did not have to canvass votes with new ideas and policies: they just bought their seat, seeing it as an economic investment. That is changing. Increasingly there are some very good, diligent, resilient politicians speaking out in favour of systematic reform.

People are now increasingly aware of their ability to choose who to vote in and who to vote out

I firmly believe that strong institutions can minimise the impact of transgressions by individuals. We have tried to build INEC as an institution that can function fully and effectively regardless of who is in charge. A lot of progress has been made but it needs to be consolidated. The issue of campaign finance is one example. Although a political party monitoring unit was established in 2012, there is a need for greater legal clarity about when campaigns start, and hence when donations count, and on punishment for overspend transgressions. A lot more could be done to name and shame individuals. If the public is made aware that a candidate has spent over the legal allowance before the campaign is complete, open and inclusive discussions about what should be done can take place.

The power of the president to appoint the chairman and commissioners of INEC, and resident electoral commissioners (RECs) in each state, also needs examination. As my tenure demonstrated, an incumbent can appoint national commissioners who assert INEC’s independence, but it helps a lot if there are institutional mechanisms and legal provisions that protect and defend its legal autonomy. I think that INEC’s chair and 12 commissioners should be appointed upon the recommendation of an independent panel; and that the Commission should have the power to hire and fire the officials that work for it, including RECs. RECs appointed by the president are likely to have greater loyalty to the executive than to INEC. This was not an issue I could take on within INEC, as it may have generated too much internal conflict at a time of great change, with RECs saying that we were trying to take away their power. Now, safely out of INEC, I have no doubt that the issue needs to be confronted.

Some of the current responsibilities of INEC still need to be reassigned to other agencies and bodies, as the JUERC report recommended in 2008. For example, the Commission is legally responsible for prosecuting those accused of electoral offences, but with a very small litigation team that is already fully preoccupied by election petitions, it is not in a position to do so. In 2010, there was no record of anyone in Nigeria having been prosecuted for an electoral offence. When I left office in 2015, more than 200 people had been held to account. But this was just a drop in the ocean. Looking at voter registration irregularities alone we have 870,000 cases from 2011. Electoral offences are committed with impunity and INEC does not have capacity to deal with it. Prosecution is very costly and time-consuming. It requires reports about offenders from police and other members of the security services and these reports often fail to materialise, which further hamstrings the process. The JUERC proposed the creation of an Electoral Offences Commission in 2009. Such a mandated independent body is still needed.

INEC can do a lot to improve the transparency and efficiency of the tallying process further. There is still no real-time electronic transmission of results that voters and participants can monitor. Increased deployment of technology would eliminate errors and delays in the computation and compilation of results and speed up their declaration. In addition, greater effort needs to be made to ensure representation of political parties and civil society at all levels of results collation. Accusations of people paying security officers to block others from entering the collation centres persist. I would also encourage civil society observers and party representatives to develop systems for parallel voter tabulation, an approach that worked very well during Ghana’s 2016 elections.

By the time I left INEC after the 2015 elections, it seemed to me that the drive for electoral reform had diminished. A number of recommendations were made to the National Assembly between 2012 and 2015 for amendments to the electoral framework, but regrettably nothing was done. One particularly pertinent issue is in respect of the presidential run-off. According to the legal framework, it has to take place within seven days of the first round of voting. Ahead of the 2015 vote a run-off seemed a possibility, but INEC would have been unable to meet this constitutional requirement if it had happened. We pushed very hard for an amendment, to the extent that other changes we wanted were eschewed, such as clarification of intra-party democratic oversight. The seven-day stipulation remains unaddressed. An appropriate review of the Constitution and the Electoral Act, 2010 could bring about a marked improvement in the legal framework for the conduct of elections with integrity.

Electoral democracy at the national level is important, but if it fails at the grassroots then problems will persist. Looking forward, promoting democracy at the LGA level is vital. Political education generally, and voter education in particular, need to be intensified. This would enable people to make more informed choices and minimise the phenomenon of wasted or spoiled ballots. I would like to see greater mobilisation and empowerment of women and youth in the Nigerian electoral process by 2019.

Although the responsibility for local elections lies with state independent electoral commissions (SIECs), in 2010 very few LGAs were holding polls. Working with SIECs, INEC was able to ensure LGA elections have been held in all but three states. However, constitutional provisions need to be amended so that the independence and autonomy of SIECs are strengthened. They need financial and legal independence from the [state] governor to deliver credible elections. Once in a while a governor will appoint an SIEC chief who tries to assert their independence and do good work. In Benue state, a former JUERC secretary was appointed and he has been able to push through important reforms. In Nasarawa, the state court declared in December 2016 that the governor has no power to dissolve an elected local council, something they often try to do when it is politically expedient to do so. These may be small signs of further democratic progress, but for an optimist like me they are significant.

BACK TO CONTENTS

ASSL is mandated to report findings to the nation’s Parliament, as is the case for many other supreme audit institutions around the world. It is up to parliamentarians to scrutinise the report and ask the auditees to address the concerns raised. Section 119 (5) of the 1991 Constitution clearly states that Parliament “shall debate the report of the Auditor General and appoint where necessary in the public interest a committee to deal with any matters arising therefrom”.

The statistics are clear. Between 2010 and 2014, this office put forward 953 recommendations, of which 231 were implemented, 75 are in progress and 647 were not implemented. The level of action we would expect to have been taken has fallen short. For the whole public financial management system to be more effective, and for the people of Sierra Leone to benefit in full from funds generated by the government or received from international partners, it is important that audit recommendations are acted upon better.

A good number of the 953 recommendations aim to address systemic issues. For example, fixed asset registers not being completed, late issuance of payments and bank reconciliation statements not signed by the appropriate authority. These are issues for which there are quick and easy solutions, but we are not seeing these solutions implemented.

As an office we have moved a long way since 2007, the year I joined as deputy auditor general. Then we had just three qualified accountants. We now have 24 and a good number of them have received advanced training, funded by the audit office. We have benefitted from consistent, albeit slow, financial support from the government that has only begun to wane in the last year or two.

Overall in Sierra Leone I think the government views us as a necessary evil

Staff members are employed by an independent Audit Service Board and are not part of the civil service. Since 2007 they have been paid on a par with private sector auditors. In Africa auditing can be a risky business because the work often exposes what people want to hide. Public sector auditors need to be well remunerated.

Sierra Leone is one of the few countries in Africa that has enshrined administrative independence for its audit office into law. The 2014 Audit Services Act (see endnotes) was a positive development for our institutional freedom. It is important for audit offices to establish and retain fiscal independence. Doing our job and maintaining our independence is a daily struggle.

Tensions exist between supreme audit institutions and governments across the world. Governments are mandated to pay the salaries of audit staff but are often criticised by report findings. Overall in Sierra Leone I think the government views us as a necessary evil. Yes, we shine a light onto things that they would rather keep hidden; but we also lend credence to the accountability framework in the public financial management system, ensuring their actions are given greater national and international credibility.

BACK TO CONTENTS

There have been improvements, for example, in the auditing performance of all 19 local councils. In 2013, 44.4% were audited as unqualified or satisfactory. That number has risen to 72.2%. An unqualified opinion is an independent auditor’s judgement that a company’s financial records and statements are fairly and appropriately presented. However, there are still lots of areas where change is needed.

Take procurement as an example, because that is where the money is and that is where unethical activities tend to occur. The rules set out in the Public Procurement Act of 2004 are still frequently flouted. When you have very senior government officials getting involved in the issuance of contracts, and then not questioning the delivery and quality of those goods, there is a problem in the system – a problem that fails to adhere to value for money principles.

Cash management poses a serious problem in Sierra Leone, both in the immediate and long term

Every year we audit ministries of “high importance” – broadly based on the funding they receive – alongside other specially selected MDAs (ministries, departments and agencies). Since 2011, a lot of money has gone into departments without the outputs you might expect. With its level of funding, the Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security should have been able to achieve the food security level targeted by the government, but we are far from that. The Ministry of Education has invested heavily in improving attendance at school, but there is more to education than volume. Quality is equally, if not more, important. The Ministry of Health and Sanitation has failed to roll out the Free Healthcare Initiative as it intended. The outbreak of Ebola showed up the health sector as a shameful panoply of dysfunction.

Lots of procurement has to be done in the health sector for medicines and equipment, but we still have problems ensuring that what is obtained is delivered on time and meets basic quality standards. In 2014, payment was made to a contractor to supply ambulances during the Ebola crisis. I have seen no evidence of that contract being fulfilled in its entirety. Even when goods are supplied on time, in full, and to an acceptable standard, issues remain. Budget padding – inflating the price of goods to four or five times their normal value – is costing the government a lot of money. We have identified the revenue generation side of the budget as another area of concern.

Leakages of various types are substantial enough to cause serious difficulties in the management of the day-to-day running of government affairs. The country is cash-strapped – ministries and departments are not able to access the money they need to function effectively. This year the ASSL has received just two-thirds of our half yearly allocation so far. This is all because of cash flow shortages in the system. Cash management poses a serious problem in Sierra Leone, both in the immediate and long term.

BACK TO CONTENTS

Insufficient pressure is put on auditees to respond to the recommendations of reports. If there were greater consequences for ignoring these, perhaps attitudes would change. One solution would be to not release financial allocations to ministries until they enacted at least some of the recommendations from the ASSL audit. Ministries need to be incentivised to do the right thing if compliance is to become the norm.

If you ask someone in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, for example, about the functions and role of the audit office you will be given the answer that you want to hear – the nice answer, that they are working closely with the ASSL and supporting our work. They do support us in allowing our auditors to carry out reviews, but when it comes to action on recommendations little changes.

Perhaps ministries do not understand the importance of audits and financial processes. We are not investigating them to cause problems but to ensure that funds for the development of Sierra Leone are being spent judiciously. As it is, ignoring our recommendations is causing widespread problems in the broader public financial management system.

When it comes to capacity, lots of training of audit staff within MDAs has been done. They should be aware of the basic things they are supposed – and not supposed – to do. The laws are also there to guide them. The need for adherence to the law is not something that you need to go to a special school to learn. Nonetheless, it will not happen until there are consequences for flouting the rules, both for individuals and ministries. Until we get to that point, commitment to proper audit practices will continue to be a personal choice.

It is true that because of the work of the audit office in shining a light and exposing malpractice people are becoming more careful. It is also true that there is a limit to what adherence to “due process” can prevent when it comes to the misuse of funds. If malpractice is done totally off the books and we cannot see it, then we cannot talk about it. Rumour and speculation cannot be allowed to impinge on the auditing process. One way of addressing this problem would be to carry out a forensic audit, but we do not yet have the requisite skills or capacity.

They do support us in allowing our auditors to carry out reviews, but when it comes to action on recommendations little changes

When our annual report for 2015 is presented to Parliament in December 2016 many of the same problems identified in my first report will still be highlighted: internal controls, cash management and procurement procedures continue to be areas of concern. Many know that if they get caught it is unlikely they will face significant consequences.

I look forward to a scenario when, after Parliament has finished with our annual report, efforts are made to prosecute based on malpractice highlighted by our findings. In five years my office has never received a communication from the attorney general’s office about action being taken against public officials because of what we have uncovered. Nor have I been given any formal indication that our efforts have formed the basis for successful prosecutions by the Anti-Corruption Commission (see endnotes). We have actively sought to engage both with our work, as they are the ones mandated to investigate those who have transgressed. The will to act has to come primarily from these institutions.

BACK TO CONTENTS

The major lesson, in hindsight, is that we should have gone in earlier. It was a difficult decision to know whether we should go in, because of the nature of the crisis. What were people going to think if auditors came in and started asking questions rather than helping? People were dying. But when we started learning that concerns were being raised about the effectiveness of the response, we decided to act.

In simple terms, a real-time audit involves monitoring expenditure and financial processes as and when the activities are taking place. It not only saves the government a lot of money but can quickly stop malpractice before it spirals out of control. We took examples from other countries, in particular China, where auditors conducted a real-time audit during flooding, and sought to learn and adapt these experiences to Sierra Leone. We were fortunate that our government was supportive of this innovative approach.

the issues raised by the two Ebola audits highlight the same problems raised in our annual report

I am not saying that our approach completely stopped malpractice, but it certainly sent a message. At the very least it slowed down misappropriation of funds, particularly after the first audit report was published in February 2015. Individual staff became more cautious about putting their signature to documents that they knew the ASSL auditors would scrutinise. The second part of the audit, published in February 2016, recognised the improvements in financial management of the Ebola response. It also drew attention to the lack of punitive action against the malpractice raised by the first report.

As an auditor I cannot dictate to Parliament what they should do with the report and how they should act on the findings. Nor is it the role of the auditor general to prescribe punishment. What I can say is that the issues raised by the two Ebola audits highlight the same problems raised in our annual report and as a Sierra Leonean I think it should have been dealt with better. For serious breaches of financial management procedure I would support forcing the individuals responsible to pay back the money. It would send a strong message. But currently this does not happen. People continue to get away with transgressions.

BACK TO CONTENTS

During the Ebola outbreak none of the funds that came in, apart from those that went directly to the government, were subject to the scrutiny of the audit office. This is despite us writing letters to donors asking to see how the money was being spent.

I understand that the money coming in was not Sierra Leonean taxpayers’ money, but these were funds being spent to support and help the people of this country. The ASSL has the constitutional mandate to report to the Parliament of Sierra Leone (see endnotes), which in turn is directly accountable to the citizens of this country. When international partners claim they have helped improve the country in key sectors like health and education we would like to be able to verify and validate those claims. This could be done if auditing of these funds was standard practice.

When international partners claim they have helped improve the country in key sectors like health and education we would like to be able to verify and validate those claims

Institutionally we have come a long way, so a lack of capacity is not an issue. At the very least international actors could give us copies of their audits to put in our own reports. But this does not always happen and some of the agreements the government enters into with external agencies lack transparency.

More broadly, we do audit World Bank-funded projects and conduct quality assurance on audits done for African Development Bank-funded projects. The ASSL does audit funds from the UK’s Department for International Development given as direct budget support to the government through our regular audits of MDAs.

The quality of our reports and our credibility is everything

We would like to engage in monitoring some of the infrastructure projects being undertaken in Sierra Leone; and also to carry out IT and extractive industry audits. A special investigations team would enable us to explore new areas without distracting us from the work we are doing now. We cannot do everything, however, and it would be difficult, for example, to obtain the contracts and documentation necessary to carry out an audit of Chinese infrastructure projects. We are not shying away from that challenge or any other, but it is important that we do not overstretch ourselves. The quality of our reports and our credibility is everything. I believe in focusing on what is achievable and doing it right, only then can you expand and grow.

BACK TO CONTENTS

Before becoming Auditor General I met people that did not even know the office existed, when in fact it has been around in various guises since 1962. In 2010 our annual report became a public document but it was not until 2012 that it became public knowledge. It was in that year, shortly after I took office, that we started making a concerted effort to raise levels of citizen awareness about its contents. It is important Sierra Leoneans are better informed about what is really happening with government finances.

Take the South African municipal elections in August 2016 as an example. I watched a political rally the weekend before the vote where people were using the findings of the auditor general’s report to hold the municipal authority to account, asking questions about its misuse of funds. This would not have happened if the reports were not publicly available. It is a great example of how the work of audit offices can push for change even when governments are reluctant to do so. If we can engage Sierra Leoneans sufficiently, they will be the ones to pressure the government into reform.

In 2015, 4% of the ASSL budget, which is a little over US$1m, was set aside for civic engagement. Staff, accompanied by the principal auditor of the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (see endnotes), embarked on a nationwide sensitisation and awareness-raising programme. The aim was twofold: to explain the operations of the audit office and to share the contents of the most recent reports. We had meetings with key stakeholders in all 14 districts of the country. There were interactive radio debates in English and vernacular languages, and schools were visited to educate the next generation. In total, over 50 public gatherings were held.

It is important Sierra Leoneans are better informed about what is really happening with government finances

Engaging with civil society and journalists when a new report is issued is also important. By convening day-long information sessions we can better position them to inform the wider population of our key findings. But further improvements are needed. The voluminous nature of our annual report does not make it widely accessible. We are in the process of developing an approach to present key findings in a more digestible and visually engaging way. The first report to benefit from accompanying infographics will be the 2014 annual report which was tabled in 2015.

Efforts to improve our own transparency at the ASSL have led to more questions being asked of government as to why certain expenditure is poorly accounted for and why promised projects are not being delivered. Our financial statement for 2015 was externally audited and published on our website. We also have to set a good example and reflect on what we can do better.

BACK TO CONTENTS

This was an interesting time. In 1981 the World Bank published the famous – or what some refer to as “infamous” – report, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action. It became known as the Berg report, after Elliot Berg, an American economics professor who was co-ordinator of the African Strategy Review Group. I was the only African on the team of economists who authored that report! I was young, having only joined the Bank in 1974.

The context in which the report was written is quite different from today. In 1981, the continent was in dire straits – economic growth tumbled, government deficits soared, world commodity prices plummeted, terms of trade were stacked against African countries and the debt crisis was just beginning. People were asking, “Wow, what has happened to this continent?” That is the background, which I think is important.

There was a lot of concern about the state of Africa’s economies. The purpose of the Berg report was to understand the root causes of the problems, and to devise actions to address them. The request for this study actually came from the African members of the World Bank’s executive board.

There were big debates raging about whether the causes were external or internal, and to what degree. Many blamed the spike in world oil prices, while others faulted the rise in global interest rates that caused government debts to escalate. The conclusion of the report was that bad policies were the principal reason for the crisis. Emphasis was placed on poor internal policies and governance. Not everyone agreed with the findings of the Berg report, African governments in particular.

Just after the report was published, I was asked to go with Elliot Berg to discuss its findings with the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), an organisation of which I later headed. We had a very frosty meeting with the ECA, and the OAU did not see us at all.

Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) ended up more or less being imposed on countries, as there was no genuine commitment to reforms.

So what did the Berg report say exactly? It criticised a host of bad practices, including poor macro-economic management, uncompetitive exchange rates, overly interventionist agricultural policies such as subsidies, pan-territorial pricing and corrupt parastatals. The World Bank felt that it could no longer pour money into projects without addressing the fundamental structure of economies and policy-making.

These were valid criticisms. I think where the Bank went wrong was that it did not consult widely enough in Africa. The report was also too harsh on African governments. Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) ended up more or less being imposed on countries, as there was no genuine commitment to reforms. In general, African countries did not have the capacity to negotiate or implement the reforms.

Certainly, some of the basic fundamentals of structural adjustment were correct, but the way the relationship was handled left much to be desired. The expenditure cuts in social sectors, for example, were indiscriminate.

There is an explicit acknowledgement within the World Bank that they got some things very wrong. The evaluations done by the Bank’s Operations Evaluation Department – it’s now called the Independent Evaluations Group – were scathing about some of the SAPs. Pressure from civil society around the world also prompted the Bank to rethink its approach. The appointment of James Wolfensohn as president of the World Bank also helped. He believed there was more than one path to economic growth and poverty reduction; an approach which improved the Bank’s relationship with Africa.

In 2014, the policy landscape in Africa is radically different. Over the last 15 years, African economies have been growing at an accelerated rate, with six of the world’s 10 fastest growing countries in the 2000s being located in sub-Saharan Africa. One of the key reasons is because policymaking has improved. Macroeconomic performance is stronger. There is greater local ownership over development programmes. Furthermore, issues such as trade liberalisation, privatisation, budget deficit reduction, and exchange rate management are no longer contentious.

BACK TO CONTENTS

Again, the context is important. I became Executive Secretary of the ECA in 1995. This was an interesting time because the trinity of development issues – aid, trade and debt – were beginning to converge in discussions between donors and recipient countries. African governments were becoming more vocal in their calls for assistance that went beyond the delivery of aid. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative was instigated in 1996 by the World Bank and the IMF.

In 2000, I organised a conference in Addis Ababa for African ministers of finance to discuss financing development in Africa. It was actually a sort of African precursor to the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2002. This was where the discussion about aid effectiveness really began to take root. Yes Africa needs more aid, we said, but it also needs better aid. We started to turn the tables by arguing that aid effectiveness is not just an issue for recipient countries. The way aid is delivered by donors is equally important.

The way in which aid is delivered has certainly improved, but it’s a mixed bag.

Every year after the Addis conference I organised smaller round-table meetings between African and OECD ministers to further thrash out issues relating to aid effectiveness. We discussed the need to reduce transaction costs, the desire for more direct budget support and the importance of local ownership of aid programmes. These discussions ultimately culminated in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005 and the Accra Agenda for Action in 2008.

So where are we now? The way in which aid is delivered has certainly improved, but it’s a mixed bag. Questions of aid effectiveness – such as local ownership, co-ordination and mutual accountability – are firmly on the agenda. Countries that have taken the ownership issue seriously have been able to deliver some very effective programmes. In Rwanda and Tanzania, for example, the government calls donor meetings and it sets the agenda. This seems to have worked well.

The architecture of aid has also changed. Philanthropic foundations, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, are now some of the biggest donor organisations. And then there is China and other newly industrialised countries. The private sector is also a significant player. So while aid is still important, its place in the discussion of financing African development is not the same as it was 30 years ago. There are more resources available to African countries than ever.

BACK TO CONTENTS

I think there are different dimensions to state capacity. The first point to make is that transformation is a long-term process. It takes 20–30 years.

The state must have a plan, a vision, of how to achieve transformation and governments need to be consistent. This is especially important in a democratic environment where governments change every four or five years. The continuity of policy is as important as the capacity of the state to deliver.

Southeast Asian countries, such as Malaysia, had a central agency that called the “economic” shots. But development is about much more than this. It is about co-ordinating various institutions. The ability of these institutions to monitor programmes to ensure they are on track, to manage resources in an equitable and efficient manner. These are all critical factors. So we need to isolate each dimension of state capacity. I think the African Transformation Report goes a long way towards doing this by giving specific examples of what has been done elsewhere.

One of the main aims of the report is to learn from past experience. African countries have tried adopting laissez-faire economic principles in the 1980s through SAPs and more interventionist import substitution industrialisation policies in the 1960s and 1970s. Neither worked. So let’s learn from that. It’s important to be pragmatic, rather than ideological, and embrace both sides.

The continuity of policy is as important as the capacity of the state to deliver.

In the report we put forward the idea of “market-friendly industrial policy”. It is about the state and the private sector working together. The state has an important role to play, including getting the fundamental economic and institutional structures right. It can also be proactive in helping the private sector to access appropriate technology. But it is important to be clear about where the role of the state ends and that of the private sector begins.

It is not enough just to produce reports explaining how states can improve their capacity. This is the problem I have had with donor-funded think-tanks and research outfits. Governments are overwhelmed with these reports sometimes. I wanted to change the paradigm, so that’s why I set up ACET, after 20 years of working in the World Bank and the ECA.

At ACET we call ourselves a think-and-do-tank. We engage with governments in the nitty-gritty of policy-making and implementation. In Liberia, for example, we are working with the Ministry of Finance on a staff audit. In Sierra Leone we are helping the President co-ordinate the delivery of public services.

The amount of money available is certainly important, but how effectively state resources are used is also crucial. You need to tackle both sides. For most African countries, the revenue-to-GDP ratio is quite low, so there is clearly a lot of room for more domestic tax collection. In order to get value for money, governments must also allocate resources to productive sectors that will make a difference.

The right policies need to be in place to improve the efficiency of government spending. If a road can be built in a year but through poor procurement policy it takes five years, there is no point in talking about more money for infrastructure development. This is the challenge for many African countries.

BACK TO CONTENTS

To answer this question it is important to ask where did we start, how far have we come, and where do we want to go?

For me, governance – how governments function and deliver public goods to their citizens – has a direct relationship with economic development. It is not a political issue in the sense of determining who should or should not be in power. It is about fostering what I coined “a capable state”. Governments in Africa must have the capability to mobilise financial resources, deliver public services and ensure peace and security. The totality of these three will lead to sustainable, long-term development.

There have been a lot of improvements in governance on the continent over the past 15–20 years. The majority of countries are multi-party democracies. There is an accepted role for civil society in holding governments to account. Women are playing a more active and meaningful part in national politics. These trends – in what I call “first-generation” governance issues – are clear to see. It may not be perfect, but it is certainly a work in progress.

Any developing country must have a national platform where the government and opposition can work together for the national interest.

So, how does governance relate to economic transformation? The African Transformation Report says that without peace and security you can forget about good governance and economic transformation. That is why all 15 countries in our survey are stable and conflict-free. We also defined the role of government, with respect to the need for a national development plan, policy continuity between national elections and the proper use of financial resources.

African governments must now start confronting the second-generation governance issues. Even my own country, Ghana, which has made considerable progress in holding free and fair multi-party elections, still experiences governance problems that undermine development. What are they? The winner-takes-all mentality of politics is one clear example. Any developing country must have a national platform where the government and opposition can work together for the national interest. There is still a lot of corruption in politics and business. You cannot achieve long-term transformation if you do not tackle these problems.

BACK TO CONTENTS

The context in which Asian countries underwent economic transformation was very different to that which African countries find themselves in today. Most countries were autocratic. African countries cannot operate like that in today’s global economic order.

My colleague Yaw Ansu, the chief economist at ACET, offered an anecdote recently which nicely sums up this point. He said that he has lived under a dictatorship and a democracy, and there is no way he wants to live under a dictatorship again. Many people feel like this. You cannot impose that kind of Asian approach in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. So the question becomes: how do we learn from Asia, but apply the lessons in a different environment?

You cannot impose that kind of Asian approach in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa.

In Africa today, countries like Ethiopia and Rwanda have done very well with respect to economic transformation. They have achieved important fundamentals such as implementing a coherent national development plan, consistent policy, co-ordination between the various arms of government and, ultimately, delivering tangible results. Strong leadership is important. This is a lesson we can take from Asia, and it is evident in Ethiopia and Rwanda. Nevertheless, I believe it is possible to have strong democratic leadership in contemporary Africa.

In terms of industrial policy, many Asian countries closed their markets to foreign competition in order to build the global competitiveness of the domestic private sector. It was much easier for Park Chung Hee in South Korea to say “export or perish”. Today, with World Trade Organization regulations and the liberalisation of international markets, it is not easy for African countries to adopt such strategies.

So yes, there are certain areas where African countries can learn from Asia, but we must also accept that we live in a different environment.

BACK TO CONTENTS

There is an entire chapter in the report dedicated to capturing what we call “the low-hanging fruits”. Manufacturing is certainly critical to economic transformation.

In the report we developed a manufacturing index, which tries to dissect – and understand – why African countries are not attracting the necessary foreign direct investment in light manufacturing and component assembly industries. We also interviewed about 20 executives from manufacturing companies operating in Africa to understand what they think is holding back industrialisation on the continent.

The issues that arise time and again are education and skills. If countries want to be able to export value-added goods, they must improve the quality of their labour force. And this means investing in education and skills development. Take, for example, agro-processing. The African continent has abundant land and natural resources. But historically most countries have exported their key agricultural commodities – like cocoa, coffee and tea – raw. How do you add value? This requires skills and knowledge.

There are other factors holding back industrialisation in Africa. Market size is one. Infrastructure and transport is another. These constraints need to be identified and addressed systematically. This is why we place such an emphasis on strong leadership, and on the need for a national vision. It will not happen automatically. African governments must make it happen.

I must also say that we do not talk enough about the external barriers to trade these days. The issues around the Doha Development Agenda, such as tariff escalation and subsidies, are still relevant today. Too many people have abandoned Doha, but it remains critical. I still believe in the Doha process. I would even accept a “Doha light” agreement if it improved trade conditions for African countries.

The African Transformation Report really tries to stress the importance of “growth with depth”, where depth is an acronym for diversification of production and exports, export competitiveness and gains, productivity increases, technology upgrading, and human well-being. This is one of its main contributions. In the report, we have developed metrics for measuring each of the depth indicators of economic transformation.

The ATI is an outcome index. There are a number of reasons why these countries ranked poorly in the index but, in particular, they have not made the necessary strides towards the diversification and the export competitiveness indicators. Ghana has fallen six places between 2000 and 2010.

The report is not prescriptive in terms of telling countries how they should achieve economic transformation. The situation in every country is different. We are working with some African countries, like Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, to identify the specific issues that need addressing and devising strategies to move forward.

There has been a lot of improvement in enrolment rates in primary education over the past fifteen years, but the quality of education remains abysmally low. In many countries, studies have shown that some primary school graduates cannot even read and write. The enrolment rates in secondary and tertiary education are substantially lower than in Asian countries at the equivalent stage of development.

African governments must grapple with the need for greater vocational education and training. In Ghana many polytechnics are turning themselves into universities because they can attract higher-fee-paying students. This is an area where the state can and should intervene.

There must be greater collaboration and co-ordination between the public and private sectors with respect to education and skills development. They need to be tailored to the economy. At the end of the day, transformation is about people. The ability of a country to specialise in a particular sector, whether IT or engineering, comes down to what kind of skills exist within the labour force. It is a technical issue, but it’s also more fundamental than that.

BACK TO CONTENTS

I am a Nkrumah man, you know. He is my hero.

My former organisation, the ECA, has been at the forefront of efforts to promote greater co-operation between African states. There is no shortage of regional institutions or protocols calling for greater integration and alignment on the continent. We have established institutions, signed these agreements, but African governments have not supported them financially. Most regional economic communities (RECs) on the continent and the African Union rely on external sources to fund their programmes. There is an issue of lack of political will here.

Towards the end of my tenure at the ECA I instigated a series of research reports called “Assessing Regional Integration in Africa”. The second of the reports addressed the plethora – or “spaghetti bowl”, as we referred to it – of RECs in Africa. It is common for one country to be a member of two, three and even four RECs. These overlapping memberships, mandates and objectives have resulted in unnecessary duplication of efforts and misuse of scarce resources. I made “rationalisation” of RECs one of my pet projects in those days. The abundance of poorly funded RECs in Africa has really frustrated genuine co-operation and integration.

The compilation of high-quality data is vital for transformation in Africa.

Intra-African trade is an important indicator of economic transformation, but we do not have the necessary institutional capacity and co-ordination between states to measure this phenomenon effectively. Statistics on intra-Africa trade are notoriously unreliable. Some people say that it is beginning to creep up, and that the reality is much better than what the official data says, but who is to know for sure? I do not know whether intra-African trade is 8%, 10% or 13% of overall trade. Nobody knows. The compilation of high-quality data is vital for transformation in Africa. You cannot plan when you do not have an industrial census, for example.

The political will to drive the regional integration agenda has been lacking. I have always said that national policy-makers should not only think nationally. They should think and act regionally to pursue comparative advantages more effectively in the global economy or to plan basic infrastructure. But it doesn’t happen because the follow-through is not there. Protocols are signed but not implemented. Politicians pay lip service to the regional integration agenda but then do not make the necessary adjustments to turn this rhetoric into reality.

BACK TO CONTENTS

I have been asked a number of times to comment on the views expressed by Mr Lamido Sanusi in his article for the Financial Times. The majority of Western analysts and commentators have dwelt on his assertions that China “is a significant contributor to Africa’s deindustrialisation and underdevelopment” and is “capable of the same forms of exploitation as the West”. My reaction to the article was quite different.

China’s job, our responsibility, is to try and help Africa compete with us

Mr Sanusi made a very important point. He said that African countries must compete with China. This is very good. Africa is strong enough to fight economically, but this is the first time we are hearing that it is willing to do so. I welcome this kind of attitude. China’s job, our responsibility, is to try and help Africa compete with us.

In Nigeria, and elsewhere in Africa, they are in a difficult period. China has been through this process. When we decided to reform in the 1980s, under Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping, we had such a fierce debate. Are we willing to become a capitalist society? Are we willing to allow those “evil” Western companies to come to China and make huge profits from our labour? What are we doing? These were the questions we argued about. Deng Xiaoping had to see to it personally that the debate did not become an obstacle to reform.

As a result of the economic reforms, and opening up to Japan and Western competitors, thousands of companies went bankrupt in China. They could not produce the same quality goods at a price people could afford. Millions of people were made unemployed. We learnt quite early on in the reform process that competition with established economies would be a hard battle. It was like a revolution. First, we had to reform our own industries. Only when they were strong enough could they compete. Now we are benefitting.

Africa may be experiencing the same frustrations as China did. Many people are angry. This is understandable. They work for many years and still don’t see the results they expected. Familiar trade patterns are still there – the export of African raw materials to the outside world, including China, and the sale of manufactured goods from China and other countries to Africa. But look at the results. If you sell oil at six cents a barrel, you can barely afford to feed yourself. This is no longer the case. Nowadays oil is US$100 a barrel and producers bring back not only food and clothing but also capital for development. Many countries have accumulated capital and are reinvesting it in infrastructure and other productive assets. Now they are on the point of take-off. This is an important difference which needs to be acknowledged, rather than just saying the trade pattern is the same as colonialism.

In time, I expect a lot of manufacturing will move from China to Africa

Every country needs a starting point. Nobody will provide lunch for free – it must be earned. It is important not to overlook this. Africa has an abundance of natural resources. If African countries want to compete, the revenues need to be managed and invested well. No country can industrialise simply by selling raw materials. At the same time, if China does not listen to their frustrations then we are forgetting our own experience. If misunderstandings arise over terms of trade with certain countries, we need to talk to each other.

As China’s competitors moved up the value chain, assembly lines eventually came to us. At the beginning of our reform and opening up we saw resources as the most important factor for high economic growth. Today, I believe that demand is even more important. Without demand, a country cannot sell its output. In time, I expect a lot of manufacturing will move from China to Africa. This is what Africa wants and it is what we want. I see no loser in this competition. We are happy to move forward together. Chinese reform and prosperity have benefitted the whole world – and African development and prosperity will also benefit the whole world.

Mr Sanusi’s comments did not surprise me at all. I work in Africa and understand both sides. To me his stance is perfectly understandable. He is an African and his love is for Africa, not for China. Of course, affection for China would be welcome, but his primary concern is the development of Africa. The international community should respect African countries by allowing them to choose their own path for development, and should believe that Africa is capable of solving its own problems independently.

BACK TO CONTENTS

We want – and need – to improve our understanding of Africa. This is a real challenge. The majority of official research to date has focused on developed economies or places that constitute a major concern. The Chinese business community is also too young to understand properly how to conduct operations outside China. Too often companies and investors operating abroad take domestic practices with them which can harm their prospects for doing profitable business.

Compared with their counterparts, China’s scholars are at a real disadvantage. Western scholars have been studying the continent for generations – more than two or three centuries. Their connections are far and wide. By contrast, China was not a real participant in the global economy until the late 1970s and early 1980s. Without much business in Africa, few studies were undertaken. Scholars follow commerce. We are trying to catch up, but this cannot be done overnight.

We will work with any group of people who want to understand China better – our history, aims and ambitions

Chinese scholars interested in Africa face considerable constraints. On the government side, we probably haven’t provided enough support. Scholars have complained about this. They do not have ready access to the same luxuries as Western academics who can get hold of a wide range of information with far greater ease.

We have good relations with many African intellectuals. I’ve just returned from Oxford where I had meetings with a number of distinguished scholars who understand Africa but also recognise – crucially – that China is a developing country. In my experience, the academic community has displayed a great willingness to learn about China and our relations with Africa, rather than stand aside and criticise. Our policy is simple. We will work with any group of people who want to understand China better – our history, aims and ambitions.

BACK TO CONTENTS

China follows much the same policy in Africa as in the 1950s and 1960s, when we were supporting independence and liberation movements. After the 1970s and 1980s, reform and the opening up of the economy resulted in big domestic changes in China. The economy changed a lot, and fast. With all this growth, cities expanded rapidly, which of course affected China’s foreign policy.

The situation in Africa also altered in these decades. Now there is a new agenda for development, and new demands. The biggest change began in 2005 when economic growth started to improve. Finally the chance has come to this continent. Ten years ago, if anyone spoke about the future prospects for the world economy, that person would have to mention China as an emerging power. Today, any such discussion must also include Africa. People have been waiting for this for too long. Some have started to ask: after the growth of China, who will be next? Some predict Africa’s growth will overtake China’s.

Some predict Africa’s growth will overtake China’s

All this affected our foreign policy. You have to react to change. China has started to pay more attention to Africa, just like every other country in the world. We probably need to pay even more attention. The business community in China has not yet understood that Africa is the next growth area. This is why I travel across China to let people know what is happening and why China needs to invest more in Africa. I tell them that if we don’t, we will miss our chance. This is probably why President Xi Jinping visited the continent soon after becoming our head of state. In March, he was in South Africa, Tanzania and the Republic of Congo.

There is an assumption in some of the Western media – and to a lesser extent the African media – that the Chinese government has lots of data that it refuses to make public. It is important to ask the question – how accurate is the data we have? As a senior government official, I can tell you that it is not as precise as we would like it to be. When I need data, I have to go to different ministries and departments to extract it myself. If you want data, you must be prepared for a fight, and the figures I am given are not always correct. Often people have different ways of calculating things. The government’s statistical capacity is that of a developing country. At the BRICS summit in Durban, in March, our president mentioned that China has provided US$50bn of investment to Africa. It may just be an estimate. It cannot be 100% accurate.

I often hear that China’s government could mitigate much of the bad press it receives by being more transparent and publishing more data about our links with Africa. But whatever we do we will never please those who are determined not to see any good in China. Some of them have such a hostile attitude.

BACK TO CONTENTS

The market is the dominant force in the global economy. There is generally a low cost of labour in Africa. But the biggest challenge is to create a skilled labour force. When I was ambassador in South Africa, I was puzzled to see the government establish one programme after another for skills training. Millions of rands were spent on this – the government was desperate to train its people in order to attract industry to the country.

China also had a huge population of peasants in the 1970s. I was one of them. But in China, we just moved peasants straight into factories. When they arrived they didn’t have any skills. They knew about agricultural labour but had no idea about factory work. It was the responsibility of businesses to train them. Companies know exactly what kind of skills they need, what kind of workers they need, and they train them in the most economical way to meet their specific requirements. Can we not encourage more of this in Africa? Taking workers out of the classroom and training them on the assembly line?

Of course, you need a core group of skilled workers to do the training. We should try a lot of different approaches to get this right. I always tell Chinese companies coming to Africa, don’t just bring Chinese labour with you. If you think local staff are not skilled enough – train them. Bring together the skilled and non-skilled workers, just like we did with the TanZam railway in the 1970s – 60,000 Chinese workers trained 100,000 Africans. We need to do more of this.

A clever and wise investor can make high margins and significant profits in Africa

In the competition for jobs, investment is as important as skills. I read a book called The Architects of Poverty by Moeletsi Mbeki, the brother of the former President of South Africa. I know it is a controversial book. He says that for the past few decades, when African countries and individuals have accumulated capital they have preferred to invest it in Europe or America. You cannot criticise this – capital always goes after profit – but it has hampered economic development and diversification.

What I see now is capital being attracted to Africa from China. A clever and wise investor can make high margins and significant profits in Africa. I am always having conversations with entrepreneurs who are interested in coming to Africa. Quite a famous Chinese businessman in food processing has just told me he has chartered a plane to visit South Africa next month – he has spotted an opportunity. This continent is attractive to capital and that will encourage development.

BACK TO CONTENTS

It is not up to me to give lessons to African countries, but I can share China’s experience.

In China, food is central to everything. “Have you eaten yet?” is a common greeting. For centuries, the most important question that any ruler of China had to answer was whether they could feed the people. The Chinese government still regards agriculture as its principal priority. At the beginning of each year the first instructions set by the Communist Party of China relate to agriculture. We never stop reforming our agricultural and rural policies.

I think that many African leaders ask themselves the same questions as we do in China. But our experience cannot be replicated in Africa. The context is totally different. Africa is home to 60% of the world’s uncultivated land. China, on the other hand, is an overpopulated country with limited agricultural land. We sometimes put 100% more labour into a field in order to achieve a 5% increase in production. Survival, not productivity, is the primary concern. Without the 5% extra output, there is no safety net. If an agricultural disaster occurs which wipes out the year’s harvest, then the population at large will starve. How can people survive until the next harvest? That is the reality in China.

There are some parallels between China and individual African countries. For example, Rwanda, like China, has a large population relative to its agricultural and land resources. In both countries, agricultural capacity struggles to keep pace with population growth and each piece of land must be used effectively. But most African countries do not suffer from shortage of land. Agricultural development should be different from China’s.

When land reform occurred in China, and the land was taken away from landlords and given to the peasants, they worked the land in the same way as they always had. The vast majority of landholdings were small – family-sized – when China embarked on agricultural reform. The system of production did not change much. It was not completely disrupted by reform. In one particular African country, however, an industrialised agricultural economy existed. When land was transferred to smallholder farmers, they did not possess the skills or knowledge to run a modern farm and they received too little support. The result was that many new farmers were unable to carry on with agricultural production, and ended up selling farm assets.

Self-sufficiency in food production is a model of the past for farmers

It is a big challenge for Africa to undertake agricultural and land reform. Various experiences show that it is never a straightforward process. If African countries were to copy China, they would almost certainly fail. My advice to Chinese experts when they say they are going to tell people how to do farming in Africa is that they must study the environment – the local conditions – first. Solutions differ from country to country, and they must come out of the experience of the African farmers. We can help and collaborate with them, but we should not tell them how to farm.

We are learning and trying to find the correct way to invest in African agriculture. I don’t think we have discovered the correct way yet. For example, I administered a flawed project when I was the ambassador in South Africa. We helped to establish a training centre for farming fresh water fish. But we failed to investigate properly whether people in South Africa actually eat fresh water fish. In general, they are smaller than sea fish and notorious for their small bones. It became clear that there was not as big a market for these fish as there is in China. In each country, markets are different and consumers have different preferences. If the market does not exist, any agricultural initiative is likely to fail.

Agriculture is a commercial activity. Farmers must find markets for their produce. Self-sufficiency in food production is a model of the past for farmers. In modern agriculture, farmers must respond to what the market demands. This is a big challenge. China does not have all the answers or experiences to share with people. But we are trying to learn.

BACK TO CONTENTS

It is impossible to co-ordinate all these things, even if we wanted to. China is a developing country. The government in Beijing sometimes appears very capable, but in fact when we have tried to control foreign investment and trade we have found that it is impossible. Even for Western countries it is not possible – can you control the activities of all your people abroad?

China is neither bad nor good. China is a combination of these things

China is a huge country with so many provinces, cultures and traditions. When people generalise about China, I say to them, “the ‘China’ you are talking about does not exist. You must be precise”. When referring to the Chinese government, you must be clear about which government – provincial, local or central – and which activity. You cannot generalise and say “this is China in Africa”, any more than you can say “China is good” or “China is bad”. China is neither bad nor good. China is a combination of these things.

BACK TO CONTENTS