Global Governance, State Capacity and the Development Crisis in Africa

Abstract

This article explores the nexus between global governance and state capacity in view of the implications for development crisis in Africa. Adopting a global governance analytical framework, the article contends with the norms and rules guiding contemporary world order. Primarily designed by Western powers and their allied multilateral institutions, African states often play pe ripheral roles in the process of global governance. It is argued that various international developmental models and strategies including Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) introduced by Western powers and their multilateral agencies cannot yield the desired goals at the expense of good governance and productive political order in various African countries. The post-colonial experiences of many African states have demonstrated that successive leaderships in most parts of the continent have always undermined the tenets of good governance within the spectrum of liberal democracy . Thus, various elements of bad governance including corruption, abuse of the rule of law and contempt of democratic values on the one hand, and external ma nipulation by the hegemonic tendencies of the Western hemisphere on the other have drastically reduced Africans to captives of powerful states. The consistent pressure from global forces has undermined the capacity of the African state to implement an autonomous policy that is consistent with its historical, socio-cultural, economic and political realities. The article concludes that through effective internal governance framework and productive economic order, Africa can benefit maximally from the Western model for “best practices” on democracy. Thus, while a “global vision” may be desirable, given the interdependent nature of contemporary global order, however, the path to sustainable development depends on the development of indigenous African visions in consonance with the people’s socio-cultural, political and economic realities.