State fragility contributes to insecurity in Africa

The military coup that took place in Burkina Faso a few days ago has put to the surface the debate on the fragility of many states in the African continent. The coup in Burkina Faso is the second in the country within a space of eight months. This comes after successes of military coups in Mali, Guinea (Conakry), Sudan and Chad in the past two years.

The Sahel region, where these coups have taken place, is a politically unstable region in the continent characterised by a contagious disease of state fragility. In fact many Sub-Saharan African countries are in situations which can be described as ‘fragile’ due to a variety of factors, including poor governance, weak institutions and lack of social cohesion.

A fragile state has weak capacity to carry out basic governance functions and lacks the ability to develop mutually constructive relations with society. Fragile states are also more vulnerable to internal and external shocks such as economic crisis and conflict related issues within the region such as ISIS and al Queda insurgencies in the Sahel region. Contrary to strong states that are in most cases resilient and exhibit the capacity and legitimacy of governing a population and its territory a fragile or weak state is continually characterised by weak state capacity or weak state legitimacy leaving citizens vulnerable to a range of shocks. Fragile states such as Mali, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Somalia, South Sudan and others score very poorly when it comes to tackling chronic poverty and persistent inequality remains a key challenge. There are very few better jobs or income opportunities for a vast majority of the poor, particularly women and youth. In these countries, informal enterprise and informal employment have become a norm. Clearly in fragile states, economic growth (if there is any) does not guarantee that the poor and marginalised will participate and benefit from such a growth. The blatant failure to have economic growth that is inclusive with an equitable distribution of income then poses a danger to social and political stability.

In short the rampant poverty, skyrocketing youth unemployment, socio-economic marginalisation of certain sections of the population, endemic corruption, shrinking space in political participation, patron clientalism, inequitable wealth distribution, poor service delivery and lack of provision of security to other parts of the state, kleptocracy by political elites, undue meddling with constitutions to extend underserved shelf life in power, authoritarian leadership style that are common in fragile states are toxic for socio-political cohesion and stability within a state.

These kind of socio-economic and political environments then create local grievances, which then become a key variable driving resentment, anger, frustrations and anti-state attitudes. In other words, with economic stagnation or decline and worsening state services, the social contract then breaks down and violent conflict results. In addition, violent extremist groups such as al Queda, al Shabaab, Boko Haram, ISIS and a host of others have successfully manipulated such local grievances to entrench themselves within such marginalised populations and in the process recruit and radicalise the youth to unleash a reign of terror on local populations. In some instances, the violent extremist groups provide some socio-economic services to the people in those areas that they control thus gaining legitimacy from some populations who have long been marginalised by the state.

The results of violent conflict have led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people and internal displacement of millions across the continent. Many states in the continent are caught in a vicious circle in which political instability prevents people from undertaking normal economic activities and prevents the state from functioning as it should.

It is within such sad state of affairs that in some cases the military would step in and overthrow the government and after a military takeover promises of return to civilian rule, provision of security, law and order, fighting corruption, etc will be made to the long suffering frustrated citizens who in most cases would welcome the military coups.

However, it has proved in many instances that these military takeovers are no panacea to the deep seated problems of weak institutions that result in the lack of political will by governments to address and provide socio-economic needs to the people. Guinea is a very good example, where Mamady Doumbouya, the head of the special forces that deposed President Alpha Condé on September 5, 2021, denounced the Condé administration’s bad governance, corruption, and disregard for democratic principles. But in the months that followed, Doumbouya failed to live up to his promises, making no serious attempts to reform government or investigate allegations of corruption, much less commit to elections and a civilian transition within a quick timeframe. The same thing can be said about other military rule in Mali, Sudan and Burkina Faso.

Weak or lack of strong institutions that promote good governance, accountability, transparency, rule of law, equitable resource distributions create an explosive cocktail of problems that trap many African states in constant fragility. In other words, lack of strong democratic institutions, inept attitude and political rascality of many African leaders undermines development and governance.

This, in turn, creates poverty and state weakness, which provide fertile ground for more conflict. As a way of addressing these problems of state fragility, it is imperative that African leaders or governments transform governance systems, rewire their attitude towards public service, and encourage community participation in governance to promote accountability. Most importantly, the separation of economic decision-making and the justice system from self-indulgent political powers could do a lot of good. Convicting and shaming corrupt government officials in courts of law and public opinion would remind the stewards of these nations that with every action, there is a repercussion.