Addressing African Development Challenges

A “national dialogue” is an inclusive method of socio-political action that brings together the key stakeholders to discuss a crisis or looming crisis that has political, economic and social implications for a given country. Regardless, the national dialogues have-- various challenges which-- may be complemented by public inquiries.

Africa provides several examples of the national dialogue process. For instance, a thought -provoking debate occurred on a BBC programme, News Africa Live, which took an interest in national dialogues when then-President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria wanted to organize a national dialogue in 2005 to address the country’s national challenges, especially the problems of the oil-producing Niger River Delta region. News Africa Live asked its listeners whether they knew of national dialogues being held in their own country and what their outcomes had been. The programme received feedback from all over Africa and the African Diaspora. The responses were mixed. Some listeners supported the holding of national dialogues, others thought that they were a waste of time and money, while yet others complained that the recommendations of some past dialogues had never been implemented (such as the Liberia National conference of 1998). The supporters of national dialogue quoted as examples the reconciliation between the Nuer and the Dinka ethnic groups of Southern Sudan in 2002 and the positive results in Mozambique and South Africa in 1994, the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2002, and Kenya in 2008.

National dialogues have also been conducted outside Africa: for example, one was conducted in Mexico in 2000 to address drought and desertification in heavily populated areas punctuated by uneven development. The crisis brought together members of both the local and the national Mexican government, academia, civil society and the private sector. According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report in 2009, the participants in the dialogue reached agreement on how to address Mexico’s socio-environmental issues and how to educate the public on the importance of these problems.

Using National Dialogue to Address Natural Resource Management

Resource-rich African countries present special challenges with respect to national dialogues, given the marked income disparities between local communities and the revenues being obtained from the extraction of natural resources. Local communities in resource-rich countries most often have no equity participation in the companies that are logging, mining or drilling in the extractive sectors. With or without an equity stake, however, local communities obviously have a large role in deciding how to interact with the counterpart company – from adopting shared goals and objectives to the other extreme, criminal vandalism or destruction of the company infrastructure or assets.

Historically, though, central governments have had monopolies of control and have made all decisions on natural resource use nationwide, which is fine provided that the central government is honest and transparent. Unfortunately, the latter has often not been the case. Examples from the Niger River Delta region of Nigeria and the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline project, among others, are instructive. One member of a Chadian village along the pipeline was interviewed by Frank and Guesnet of the Bonn International Center for Conversion in 2010, and he had this to say about the villagers' impressions of the project:

“We were being betrayed. I don’t know if it is the state betraying us. The companies told us that the petroleum will develop us, like the USA, France---we awaited this development, but to our surprise they destroyed our trees, the roads, polluted our fields and we live in dust, the health gets worse. There are a lot of children dying, many families are mourning their children because of the pollution.”

This is not an isolated case; many other resource-rich African countries have similar problems. Clearly, resource-rich regions should revisit their economic and political problems.  This raises the question of how a national dialogue like the one that occurred in Mexico might be used in this process.

In order to be effective, a national dialogue requires self-reflection, a spirit of inquiry, and acceptance of the possibility of personal and institutional change. Participants in national dialogue must be willing to address root causes and not just surface symptoms. Moreover, a dialogue is not a one-size-fits-all strategy and there are neither winners nor losers. Based on the 2009 UNDP report, success for a national dialogue calls for clear objectives, flexibility, ownership, understanding of the actors involved, careful preparation, transparency and understanding of shifting power dynamics