Lecture at UI

This week we were fortunate enough to be allowed to attend a lecture by Prof. Jerry Gana, hosted by UI (Swedish institute of International Affairs). Prof. Gana, currently Chairman of the Institute of Civil Society, Abuja, Nigeria has earlier held the positions of several minister posts in Nigeria.  The lecture was about how civil society and democracy are linked to development in Africa.  He spoke of what has to be done to ”domesticate” democracy in African countries and what is afterwards required to maintain that democracy (as “democracy is much more than holding regular elections”).

Here are some of the points and opinions that were expressed in the lecture:

·         The significance of democracy once instated, really improving people’s situations, for if it doesn’t the people will lose faith in democracy and loose political interest and without those things a democracy won’t work.

·          The importance of limiting governments’ powers by effective Constitutions. When many of the dictatorships collapsed in the end of the 20^th century very weak democracies emerged according to Prof. Gana and the lacks of constitutional democracy in these countries often lead to bad governance. (A constitutional democracy can be seen as the mark of a working democracy)

·         Civil society, as a vitally important pillar to hold up a democracy. A well working civil society can hold the government accountable for its actions, through free media and other types of organizations. Basically, a country needs a strong net work of autonomous institutions to work as a counterpart against the government.  

A strong civil society is also extremely important to ensure that the population’s situation is good enough to be able to concern itself with more than surviving the day. “Poverty is the biggest threat to democracy”

·         The importance of good strong legitimate leadership to develop many of the African countries. “There is nothing as harmful to the development process as an illegitimate and indecisive leadership”

This last point was briefly discussed in the discussion that followed the lecture. It concerned the fact that relying on leaders being honest, capable and ruling with legitimate authority should maybe not be counted upon (when looking at the history of many African states so far). The system must hold for weak leaders as well. This was an interesting question and we will probably discuss it in class on Tuesday as strong leadership can be seen as a crucial point in of developing many African countries, however can it be relied upon?

Sara Väljamets