Between Tradition and Modernity: African Governance for Tomorrow Proceedings from Bamako conference 23, 24 and 25 January 2007 The conference organised in Bamako by the Institute for Research and Debate on Governance (IRG), the Alliance for Refounding Governance in Africa, and the Centre for Political and Institutional Expertise in Africa, was realized with the support of the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation for Human Progress (FPH), the French ministry of Foreign Affairs1 and the management of the Swiss Development and Cooperation department. We thank them all for their support and for the interest that they have demonstrated concerning the theme and the running of this conference. Equally, our thanks go to Djouma Traoré, responsible for the logistical organisation of the conference, to Josie Kaye who contributed to the draf- ting of the proceedings, and to all those, both organisers and participants, who made this meeting a very important moment in the reflection on the tradition and the future of Africa. Ousmane Sy, Coordinator of the Alliance for Refounding Governance in Africa, director of CEPIA, and vice-president of IRG Michel Sauquet and Martin Vielajus, Director and vice-director of IRG (1) This initiative is part of the broader French strategy concerning questions of democratic governance such as that adopted by the Inter-ministerial Committee on International cooperation and development on 5 December 2006. For France, governance is a process. It touches all the different dimensions (from the local to the global), economic (public, private and mixed), societal (the expression of the needs of users through their participation), environmental, political and cultural. It concerns a variety of actors, (public, private, civil society) and their various interactions. The actions initiated with these different partners aim to encourage the emergence of a form of governance which is adapted to the African socio-cultural contexts, and to insure the implication of African actors in the international debate on governance and to reinforce the African Union’s agenda on governance. 5 Table of contents p. 9 Introduction by Ousmane Sy, Michel Sauquet and Martin Vielajus p. 14 Presentation of the participants p. 23 Part One / The choice of leaders p. 25 Governance, legitimacy and legality in Mali, lecture by Bintou Sanankoua p. 33 Past rules and the tricky choice of current leaders, lecture by Atsutsè Kokouvi Agbobli p. 40 The choice of leaders as inspired by the African historical period, lecture by Ntji Idriss Mariko p. 47 Probing and debates, facilitated by Emmanuel Messahn Ahlinvi and Hamidou Magassa with contributions from the floor. p. 54 Summing up by Dominique Darbon p. 67 Part Two / The management of public goods p. 69 The management of public goods: the case of the Muslim states of Mali, lecture by El Hadj Mahmoud Dicko p. 75 Despotic governance, governance by chiefdom and postcolonial governance, lecture by Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan p. 91 Live by the land and abide in it by adapting to new demands and realities, lecture by Ousmane Traoré p. 105 Probing and debates facilitated by S.M. le Ouidi Naaba and Ousmane Sy and contributions from the floor. p. 109 Summing up by Mohamed Larbi Bouguerra 7 Between Tradition and Modernity: African Governance for Tomorrow Introduction Ousmane Sy, Michel Sauquet, Martin Vielajus p. 113 Part Three / The accountability of power p. 115 The accountability of power from the point of view Is “governance” a ‘catch-all’ term? of a traditionalist, presentation by Mahmoud Karamogo Bamba interviewed by Richard Toé Preliminary reflections concerning the title p. 121 Integrating the traditional authorities in democratic government of the conference systems: the challenge of reforming duality, lecture by Kwesi Jonah p. 126 Power in the old Wolof kingdoms of Senegal, Between tradition and modernity: which project for governance in Africa? from its origins to the 13th century, lecture by Mamadou Badji p. 134 Probing and debates, facilitated by Fatou Kiné Camara and Bonnie Campbell In response to this question, one of the participants during one of and contributions from the floor the first debates of the Bamako conference retorted with a joke, which contained, perhaps, elements of truth: “Governance? No thank you!” p. 146 Summing up by Raufu Mustapha Even if, as we have seen during the three sessions, the terms “tradi- tion” and “modernity” carry a variety of meanings, the word “governance” in the title of the conference is decidedly the one which is understood in p. 149 An overview of the three sessions: Summing up, precisions and avenues for research. the most diverse, the most ambiguous and the most unstable forms, as much in the minds of national and international bureaucrats, as by resear- by Moumar Dieng, Michel Sauquet and Martin Vielajus chers and policy makers from civil society. It is the word which, from the beginning of the conference, needed most to be defined, and still has a long way to go. p. 161 Annex A concept which changes - depending on history and the continent The Kouroukanfouga Charter in question - and which is sometimes instrumentalised, governance often generates more suspicion than interest. Many have decided to reject what they see as little more than a ‘catch-all’ term, too historically loaded through its direct association with the World Bank’s international coope- ration phraseology during the last decade (‘good governance’ being a condition of aid). However, for IRG as much as for the Alliance for Refounding Governance in Africa or CEPIA – the organisers of the conference –,‘gover- nance’ covers a very wide field, from modes of organisation and regulation of the way societies ‘live together’ at the local and global level, to the for- mulation of common ground rules. The questions that the term addresses are very diverse: modes of management and collective regulation, legiti- macy and accountability of actors and institutions, participation in govern- ment, the interface between levels of governance… Thus understood, and in line with the evolution of the concept within the very institutions which advocate it, we believe that governance 89 Between Tradition and Modernity: African Governance for Tomorrow Introduction today can be an essential tool for appropriation and reinvestment by the These systems, in particular those of the large empires contemporary countries in receipt of international aid subjected to over-mechanical crite- to the European Middle Ages, had their own institutions, their own modes ria of what is ‘good governance’. Africa today needs to make space for the of public affairs management, organisation and transmission of political reinvention of its own governance by means of a patient ‘to and froing’ power, their own social models, rules of war. In their time, these institutio- between local invention on the one hand – often considered as having the nal constructs were able to organise relations between different people most legitimacy – and the principles emanating from international expe- and communities over vast territories, with the aim of ensuring peace and rience in terms of governance on the other. security. One particularly noteworthy example of the collective manage- Indeed, if governance is today so high on all agendas, it is notably ment of a territory is known as the meeting of Kouroukanfouga, a place because the concept has evolved within international cooperation politics, South of Bamako that was visited by all the conference participants the in particular when confronted with the relative failure of the purely eco- day before the official opening. The region’s traditionalists often quote nomic approach to aid. When the word ‘governance’, extinct in French but this meeting which brought together, in 1235 under Soundiata Keita, the still extant in English, reappeared ten years ago, on a World Bank initia- first emperor of Mali, all the chiefs of the provinces of the empire of Mali tive, it essentially concerned the management of economic and adminis- to agree upon the rules for managing their territory. trative policies. The internal evolution at the World Bank, and even more Sudano-Sahelian Africa, which constitutes the space under scrutiny so the appropriation of the concept by the other cooperation agencies has during the conference, met with the first propagators of Islam in the 5th brought about a semantic shift of the concept towards a much larger century, arriving from the East across the Maghreb. The encounter with understanding. progressively it has come to encompass the idea of refor- Islam was, in large part, peaceful during the times of the empires of mulating regulation models and political realms in the recipient countries. Ghana, Mali and Songhay; it then turned to conquest in the case of the The place these countries have in the elaboration of reforming poli- Peul kingdom of Macina and following the djihad of El Hadj Oumar Tall. cies has yet to be properly affirmed, at a time when through that notion of These theocratic states of the 12th and 13th centuries either established on governance, their very own modes of understanding politics, public space, their territory new institutions or transformed the existing local ones forms of authority are being scrutinised. along the Islamic conception of social relationships. They also brought in What the Bamako conference seeks to achieve along with the research new models of public affairs management. initiatives which will follow on a more long-term basis, is a hand-over of the Pre-colonial Africa therefore founded States complete with devices reflection on the modes of governance to the African actors themselves. The and institutional procedures that managed communities, organised rela- aim is not to explore the modes of ‘appropriation’ using an external model tions between people and ethnic groups, and regulated both internal and of which African leaders can only have a superficial grasp, but to move external crises and conflicts. These systems were most certainly diverse towards what could be called a truly African governance project.