Africa: to succeed in the seventh decade
Audio 03:57
Jean-Baptiste Placca, editorial writer at RFI, in 2020 © RFI / Pierre René-Worms
By: Jean-Baptiste Placca
8 min
Limitation of the number of authorized political parties, respect for the Constitution, more consideration for opponents ... So many radical transformations and new habits, to put African nations back on track and on a sound basis, in this year 2021.
Publicity
Andréane Meslard: A few ideas, as we enter the season of wishes. For Africa, everyone apprehends, in the coming months, the economic consequences of the difficult year 2020 that the planet has just experienced. But, beyond this unavoidable bad news, what can we wish this continent well for 2021?
We will leave aside, if you will allow it, the litany of dreams in color, which we usually spread at the beginning of the year, without worrying about knowing, on December 31, if they more or less materialized.
Most of the nations of the continent are entering the seventh decade of their accession to international sovereignty, and the time has perhaps come to question the persistence of certain shortcomings, which end up constituting so many defects, thwarting the evolution of nations.
Economic prosperity is always more sustainable, when it is based on a healthy political environment.
Even where the foundations of a prosperous economy were established in favor of what some call "a strong power", it was necessary, then, to move to the cleaning up of the political environment, to ensure the sustainability of these. acquired.
Many often cite the dragons and other Asian tigers as examples.
But, in Africa, Botswana and Ghana also can correspond to this definition, even if, in this matter, no position is never definitively acquired.
To help create this fertile ground for sustainable economic development, what political transformations are concretely needed during this seventh decade?
It is time to ensure that the electoral deadlines do not systematically turn into political tensions, with endless deaths and disputes, which is the hallmark of those who have a confiscatory relationship to power.
It should come as no surprise that elections always give rise to unrest and violence in some states, and never in others.
No more than one should be surprised to see some revising the Constitution, for personal benefit, to the contempt of the citizens who die by the tens, even by the hundreds.
Moreover, one cannot hope to build true nations, with an infinite number of political parties, where each leader gathers in priority the members of his region, if not of his ethnic group.
In some countries, two major political parties are imposed, forcing leaders and activists to imagine criteria other than ethnicity in order to join a party.
Thus, on paper, Nigeria, with a little less than 200 million inhabitants, certainly has a dozen political parties, but only two really dominate the scene.
Suffice to say that if the Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa and other Foulani want to count, they are obliged to get together.
The criteria for belonging to a political party then integrate other considerations than the group from which one comes.
Thus, both learn to work together, in general, first for the homeland, then, possibly, for the ethnic group ...
What place, then, for the opponents?
Respect for opponents is essential, especially as a man or woman of power, today, has been or will one day become an opponent.
And many opponents of today have vocation to end, one day or another, in power, or in its periphery.
Knowing how to respect opponents and ensure them a certain dignity is therefore a way of respecting oneself.
The idea that opponents should be starved, so that they surrender in humiliation, is simply backward.
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