Reflections from Kigali….

I decided on a short side-trip to Rwanda with my Burundian colleague because, by many accounts, Rwanda has articulated a coherent development strategy and has the kind of relationship with donors articulated in the Paris Declaration of 2005. Notably, a relationship in which the donors willingly support the country’s made-at-home strategy, rather than imposing their own priorities and undermining the recipient’s autonomy.

Like twins joined at the hip, Burundi and Rwanda share a similar heritage, ethnicity, and topography and vegetation — and of course a common border. Both are landlocked, former Belgian colonies between the Congo to the east and the East African countries (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania) to the west. Their local languages are different in intonation and accent but virtually identical in grammar and vocabulary. My Burundian colleague, who has accompanied me to Rwanda, draws an analogy with English as spoken in Britain as compared to the United States. He speaks Kirundi to the Rwandais people we meet, and they respond in Kinyarwanda.

The flight from Bujumbura to Kigali is a scant 40 minutes or so in a Canadian-built DASH-8. Emerging from the airport terminal the contrasts with Burundi leap out at you. First, English is used as much as French especially with Northern tourists. Second, there is evidently an economic boom under way in Rwanda. Traffic is heavier, there is much construction under way. You get the feeling that things are happening in Kigali, compared to sleepy Bujumbura. The hotel where we are staying is full, and thronged with tourists, many American. The hotel in Bujumbura was mostly empty.

Phoenix-like, Rwanda seems to have arisen from the horrific genocide that occurred thirteen years ago. Partly for this reason I am determined to visit the Genocide Memorial after completing my business.

We meet some officials in government ministries and among the international organizations. They corroborate the reports we have heard: Rwanda has a very comprehensive and coherent development framework which is heavily supported by the UK development agency, DFID, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the European Union. “Good governance” is code for how the donors think about Rwanda. There is much to be learnt from the Rwanda experience for our project, particularly with respect to the objective of “country ownership” over its development strategy. There are, naturally, a number of wrinkles, depending on who you talk to.

We also learn that there is more to this story. Rwanda is the focus of an enfolding geopolitical strategy of the United States and the U.K. in Africa. This strategy is focused more on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the gigantic country to the east, and in the geographic heart of Africa, than on Rwanda per se. The aim is to ensure that the booming mineral economy of eastern Congo benefits the region to its east—which includes Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. In particular, it means that infrastructure—roads and rail lines—will be built to the Indian Ocean ports of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam. Although the US is not a big aid donor (the UK is the biggest), it is building a large new mission in Kigali and a new airfield.

On the afternoon before my departure I head out to the Genocide Memorial. Unfortunately the memorial opens an hour late. I spend some of the time strolling up a hill above the memorial. My walk leads me to the site of a sort of poor suburb of Kigali. Some of the dwellings are quite proper, others makeshift. People are friendly and want to greet me in French or English. I meet a young man who tells me he goes to a secondary school involving a two hour journey by foot each way. Later, waiting in line for the memorial to open, I meet a woman from the health sector in Uganda. She complains about the caps imposed on the health sector by the IMF, which is causing medical professionals to emigrate and contributing to a deterioration of the health system. I ask her about Uganda’s waves of genocide under Idi Amin and Milton Obote in the 1970s. She says there were some exhibits but these were eventually dismantled because they offended the sensibilities of the survivors.

The Kigali memorial has a number of mass graves on its grounds. We are told 257,000 people are buried therein, of the estimated one million victims of the genocide. Many of the remains are fragments and are interred in coffins some of which contain ten or more bodies. Newly discovered remains keep turning up with relatives or acquaintances who want them buried at the memorial. As a result, new mass graves have had to be constructed outside the compound. Inside there is a museum containing the history of the Rwanda genocide, complete with pictures and video clips of witnesses. The history is not too flattering to Belgium, when it was the colonial power, or France, which aided and abetted the government as it initiated purges in the early 1990s. The appalling viciousness of the genocide is recounted without recourse to melodrama.

It is a profoundly moving exhibit, one that forces you to confront the depths to which human beings can sink. Particularly hard to accept is the unwillingness and inability of the international community to intervene to save some of the 10,000 innocents who were being butchered each day for a hundred days.

I am ready to return home, feeling older and sadder, but inspired by Rwanda’s extraordinary recovery from a tragedy which is impossible to accept or comprehend.

Roy

blogging from Bujumbura…

Burundi is a very beautiful country, with its lush, verdant, hilly terrain. Astride one of central Africa’s Great Lakes, Lake Tanganyika, there are stunning views of the mountains of the eastern Congo beyond the opposite shore. Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, even with its population of 700,000, is tiny compared to Lagos. Its National Assembly is about the size of a large town hall in many Canadian cities. There is not a lot of traffic on the streets, and there are no traffic lights. There is accordingly little air pollution, which is a great relief.

However, roads are in poor repair. My Burundian colleague, driving to and from different meetings around town, swerves around crater-like potholes on every street. Oncoming cars, bicycles and pedestrians seem to move aside just in time.

The Burundians we meet tend to start work at 8 o’clock, when it is still relatively cool. During my short visit, my colleague tells me it is unseasonably hot. We turn up wearing jackets and ties, which most men seem to wear to work, even though few have air-conditioned offices. There is a break in the weather almost each afternoon, with a short cloudburst that lasts about 15 minutes.

Our interviews include a visit to the UN mission. The UN presence in Burundi is extraordinary. In a series of neighbouring compounds it occupies a vast expanse on the edge of the city, surrounded by high walls, barbed wire, and lookout towers for security guards. It seems like an armed camp. Inside the compound one sees a vast fleet of UN SUVs and other vehicles and a mini-city of offices constructed primarily out of portables. At night the entire complex is brilliantly lit with floodlights.

Burundi’s seemingly placid appearance belies the multiple tragedies that have swept over the country. Fuelled by ethnic rivalries, genocidal upheavals in 1972 and again in 1993 have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. In 2005, Burundi held its first democratic election in 12 years. On most accounts it was free and fair. A government of national reconciliation came to power with a large majority. There were great expectations, both among Burundians and the international community, that Burundi had finally turned the corner on ethnic strife.

While ethnic tensions remain subdued, in other respects many hopes have been dashed. The governing party has been accused of widespread human rights abuses and corruption. It would be an understatement to say that democracy is exceedingly fragile in Burundi, as the government stumbles from one political crisis to the next. During my visit things are at a breaking point between the president of the ruling party, who does not hold office, and many in the government who allege he is the source of a lot of the ills afflicting the country.

The current crisis impacts on our schedule. A few of our appointments are disrupted by frequent cellphone calls to our interlocutors, or urgent meetings that result in cancellation or rescheduling. Nonetheless almost all the people we meet are polite and apologetic for the disruptions.

Burundi’s 7 million people are, for the most part, exceedingly poor. Like neighbouring Rwanda, with which it shares many common traits, it is one of the very few countries in Africa that are overpopulated. Although the worst manifestations of chronic poverty are in the countryside, you can see a lot of people in Burundi who seem gaunt and emaciated. The HIV/AIDS pandemic is a major issue.

As elsewhere, Burundi’s donors are convinced that supporting basic education and health will somehow lead the country out of poverty. Our Burundian interlocutors tell us that the fact that a huge majority of the people (and the poor) subsist on low-productivity farming does not seem to enter the picture. Unless there is a significant improvement in what they eke from the soil in an overcrowded country, or numerous jobs are created in non-traditional sectors, there seems little prospect that poverty will diminish at all. For a post-conflict country like Burundi this is a particularly acute problem, since many ex-combatants are poor, unemployed and resort to violence in order to maintain themselves. It seems obvious that resolving chronic poverty and preventing the outbreak of conflict must go hand-in-hand.

Roy

Ibadan and Central Lagos

The flight from Abuja to Lagos was delayed by about half an hour. We were sitting on the tarmac, door shut, ready to take off when the captain announced that regrettably, the airspace between Abuja and Lagos had been closed because the president was presently flying. And I was stuck in a middle seat, with the air-conditioning barely on…fortunately the delay was only for half an hour.

When we got to Lagos we had to wait three quarters of an hour for our driver, who was to take us to Ibadan. He was stuck on the Lagos airport road due to traffic congestion. The problem was the ongoing acute gasoline fuel shortage which results in huge queues of cars, jamming traffic on the roadway. These traffic jams signaled the approach of an operational gas station. Other gas stations, clearly out of gas, were eerily deserted and barred from the roadway. Some people are reputed to be in a fuel lineup for days. Others in desperation go to black market depots and pay hefty premiums. (Go figure: Nigeria is one of the world’s biggest oil producers, yet there is a recurrent gasoline shortage throughout the country.)

On the highway about halfway to Ibadan there was a huge congregation of fuel tankers all idling by the roadside. What could they possibly be up to?

Ibadan is the old capital of the Yoruba part of the country. Its population is said to be around 7 million or more. On arrival it strikes you as a large village covered with a layer of red dust. The University of Ibadan is reputed to be Nigeria’s foremost. Its sprawling campus seems rundown and like everything else very dusty. I was put up in the guest house, a very modest but clean abode on campus. My purpose in visiting was to speak to a colleague from the university involved in the project (it is not such a coincidence that two members of our project team hailed from this university, given its standing).

I spent Saturday in central Lagos waiting for a midnight flight to Addis Ababa. I went on foot right into the centre of the old city (the only way you can really negotiate the narrow streets, other than with a scooter or motorcycle), which was very reminiscent of Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi. This for many denizens of Lagos is where they go for clothes, shoes, and everyday needs. I did not see one other obvious non-Nigerian in my walkabout—indeed, a few smart alecs called out “white” after me, more in derision than as a threat, but with two exceptions the vendors I stopped and chatted with were very friendly.

I also visited the National Museum, which featured a number of interesting artifacts to illustrate Nigerian history and its diverse culture, including some very attractive bronzes from the Kingdom of Benin, vanquished by the British in 1897. Another exhibit features recent political history going back to the colonial period, with photographs of successive leaders since independence in 1960. Many of these were assassinated. One rather grim if dramatic exhibit is the bullet-ridden car in which General Murtala Mohammed (who was briefly president in the 1970s), was gunned down. Oddly there was little treatment in the museum of the history of the slave trade, since it was a dominant activity for Lagos, through which slaves were exported to the Americas. Moreover, freed slaves returning from Brazil have had a pronounced impact on certain parts of Nigeria.

My enduring memories of Nigeria will be that of the hulls of abandoned cars and trucks left rusting on roads or even by the highway; of the noxious cocktail of fumes and dust that people in the city must breathe daily; of piles of garbage and patches of spent oil lying around (except, occasionally, some piles on fire, contributing acrid smoke to the fumes). Nevertheless in the midst of these hellish conditions, my admiration for the indomitable human spirit was renewed, watching ordinary Nigerians going about their daily business with determination, and exhibiting a great deal more joie de vivre than one commonly sees on the street in rich Northern cities.

Departing Lagos proved to be only a little less trying than arriving. I ended up at the terminal four hours before departure in case I encountered congestion on the airport road, which was fortunately not the case. However, the departure lounge was crammed to capacity. I was flying Ethiopian Airways. The ground staff had not opened the check-in desk even three hours before the flight, and there was no information to be found as to whether the flight was still scheduled. Finally an ‘Ethiopian’ sign appeared at desks 22 and 23 and a throng of passengers quickly materialized to form a check-in ‘queue’.

It took five and a quarter hours to fly to Addis Ababa (departing just before midnight), a three-hour layover (the airport at Addis is large, pleasant and very functional), and another four to fly to my next destination, Bujumbura. Africa is indeed a vast continent.

Roy

Dispatch from Abuja….

Abuja, the federal capital of Nigeria, was constructed in the geographic centre of the country, literally in the middle of nowhere, a full hour’s flight northeast of Lagos.

The new capital took twenty years to build. It is in many ways artificial. Arriving from Lagos it is hard to believe you are in the same country. The streets are broad, clean, well-paved, and uncongested. No beggars or hawkers are to be seen. There are shiny new edifices everywhere including the National Mosque and the National Cathedral. Most spectacular is the new National Assembly building. When it was completed in the 1990s Nigeria was still in the grip of military dictatorship. So the building has not really been used until the recent transition to democracy in 1999.

It took us three turns to get into the building, due to the considerable confusion and security checks at various entry points. We were seeking an appointment with the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee to interview him about our project. Eventually our efforts to gain admission were rewarded.

However, the reward was not a meeting with the MP in question, who was busily engaged in debate on the floor of the House of Representatives. Rather it was taking in the atmosphere of the National Assembly — the building was a beehive of activity with people constantly coming and going. And you got a sense of commitment and excitement about this third attempt to foster democracy in Nigeria over the past 47 years.

We went up to the visitors’ gallery and took in a bit of the ongoing debate. My Nigerian colleague was struck by the substantiveness of the discussion — he was expecting more levity and less-informed interventions. There was a debate on how the federal government should intervene in the political crisis in one of the southern states, and then a debate on whether the Assembly should have a role in establishing customs duties and tariff rates. Perhaps, democracy will finally put down roots here.

Roy

A note from Lagos…

The ‘official’ population of Lagos is 9 million, but unofficial estimates put it closer to 13 million. With the Harmattan blowing dust south from the Sahara, the frequent traffic jams create a noxious cocktail of exhaust and dust that stings your eyes and makes you unwilling to take deep breaths.

Street hawkers in Lagos, as in many developing country cities, descend on hapless passengers stuck in traffic. Beside displaying amputated arm stumps and the usual wares (bottled water and pop, newspapers, sweets and lottery tickets, gold “Rolex” watchers, etc.) the hawkers here seem particularly imaginative. One vendor had a battery of surge suppressors and multi-port extension plugs for computer and other equipment. Another had a small library of books, including the Nigeria Federal Constitution and the Complete Works of William Shakespeare!

An election is planned for April. Everywhere you look there are signs and posters of the candidates. There is also electoral fever in the air, you can almost feel it. One of Nigeria’s long line of military dictators, Buhari (who staged a coup in the 1980s), is trying to stage a political comeback and legitimize his political credentials. In today’s Guardian, Lagos’ leading English-language newspaper, the lead article is coverage of a stinging denunciation by Wole Soyinka (winner of the Nobel prize in literature) of Buhari’s attempted comeback.

Is democracy finally sinking roots in Nigeria? Hard to say, but there is a sense of hopefulness after President Obasanjo’s two terms as elected president draw to a close (he chose not to run again and become yet another Big Bwana clinging to power).

Roy

A message from Roy Culpeper

I am setting out on a journey across Africa to contribute to The North-South Institute’s project — Southern Perspectives on Reforming the Development Architecture.

Aid donors, at least the more honest among them, now agree that the development aid system is not achieving its objectives and therefore must be changed. However, proposals to reform the system come predominantly from the North — from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the leading donor countries, and so on.

NSI’s project asks: How would the South reform the international development architecture given the chance? After all, the system was supposedly designed for the benefit of the developing countries, so their views on reforming the system should be at least as important as the North’s, if not more so.

My colleagues Bill Morton, Rodney Schmidt and I are partnering with colleagues in Bolivia, Burundi, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Vietnam in order to assess perspectives on reform from those very five different developing countries.

I have taken on the Nigeria and Burundi case studies. This means traveling to Nigeria and then Burundi in the space of two weeks. My itinerary includes a short side-trip to Rwanda from Burundi. The purpose of my visit (and those of Bill and Rodney) is to support our research partners in each case, since they are taking the lead in the studies.

I am excited about this journey. It’s the first time I’ve visited Nigeria, Africa’s most populated country — close to 140 million — and one that has had its share of political turmoil and economic tribulation, despite (or perhaps because of) being a leading oil producer.

Burundi is a country with which my colleague Kristiana Powell (see her blog on the NSI website for more info) has recent experience–she was there for several months in 2006 and is returning shortly to undertake research on reform in the security sector (i.e. the army and the police). Burundi is widely considered a post-conflict state, since a large number of people lost their lives in civil strife between ethnic groups.

I’ll be making some personal observations in the next few blogs, as well as commenting briefly on our work.