Democracy Africa

In the editorial entitled "Africans also have the right to democracy", Le Monde makes a plea for democracy and raises this avant-garde daily to the "Summit of the Future" that "We the Peoples" are all trying to reach before the end of the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the UN. It is thus reviving a tradition initiated by its pioneers in the early 70s, when at night, under the guise of passionate debates, they fomented the first alternation of the 5th Republic by organizing the pre-selection of future leaders in a mysterious "Jacobin Club" 5, av de l'Opera, Paris-1er.

The "Protagoras Challenge" is still awaiting its "Summit on the Future of Democracy" in the presence of gigatrends affecting above all science and radical, conflictual, consensual uncertainties. It is not just a question of learning to "manage uncertainty", which is possible with the last (consensual) category with the help of a Master Plan of transformation covering all cycles (systemic, policy, behavioral, living conditions). It is also necessary to develop the capacity for policy analysis that is essential in the face of sovereignty issues and global players aspiring to the status of the sole "homo scientifcus". Finally, it is necessary to address the vital question of the absorption capacity of the exploratory methodology, which is essential for "charting pathways to resilience" by learning to navigate between scenarios. The main goal of this "Summit on the Future of Democracy" will be to obtain a consensus on the first criterion or index, namely policy culture, even if it means redefining it in more precise terms for example: the mastery of the tripolar helical diagram covering the three sciences prospective, constructive, transformative, adapting the other indices accordingly and above all equipped with a precise textbook, accessible to parliamentarians, governments, media and citizens.

The African eclipse ultimately stems from a bias since the system of government refers to a vision inscribed in space and time based on an exercise in foresight. To omit this dimension is quite simply to impose oneself as a soothsayer endowed with an "invisible hand" of the type of governance of democracy by the market (kleptocracy, plutocracy, theocracy) or by arms (kakistocracy, ethnocracy). Without excluding the polyarchy (autocracy) type of regime.

LThe case of Senegal perfectly illustrates the need to revisit the indices of democracy as soon as this country is set up as an exception confirming the so-called rule of the African eclipse. Although the Senegalese relationship to democracy is old - probably even before the first millennium - we are sticking here to the period covering the second half of the second millennium (5 centuries B.P.) in this borderless space, marked by a series of hold-ups on its population and resources. During this period, the country served as a transmission belt for several political cultures ranging from the absolute monarchy of the kingdom (fourteenth century) to the republican autocracy (twentieth century) via the Jacobin state or constitutional monarchy, and then the imperial regime. Anything but democracy like the American one held up as an example by Tocqueville. The colonial empire imposed itself from Senegal throughout West and Central Africa, again through violence and terror. Initially described as the "Ocean Gate" of slavery and the black slave trade (1500-1880), the country was then reduced to the status of a Service Station of colonial expansion (1857) before its active population was requisitioned to serve as "cannon fodder" during two world wars under the label of Senegalese tirailleurs. Despite a decisive contribution to the victory against Nazi Germany, the Allied Forces decided to assign them to the status of vanquished by forbidding them, as well as the requisitioned African-Americans, any parade in the streets of Paris and Berlin and by organizing a great extermination or T44 in a camp located in Senegal. The avowed goal is to convince them that they have no right to democracy, that nothing changes despite the abolition of slavery and that, in the name of the counter-value mechanism, they are neither eligible for the Marshall Plan nor free to dispose of their resources. This is the main reason for the exclusion of any reference to democracy in the United Nations Charter "We the Peoples" in 1945.

The sixties ushered in a new episode when, following elections, the country gained its independence. Like his mentor, he in turn fell into the republican autocracy for four decades. Colonial culture continued to be pervasive throughout the period of physical drought, aggravated by the financial drought resulting from the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). Most of the decision-making power remains in the hands of expatriate staff responsible for ensuring the continuity of the continuous flow of massive flight of resources and capital. A flow visible to the naked eye except in statistics. Revenues are therefore primarily allocated to the repayment of the external debt. A debt that is all the more artificial because it stems from this conception of official development assistance which assimilates it - depending on whether it is conditional or concessional - to a bonus for services rendered or a tip to interest groups that are candidates for the preservation of the status quo. The United Nations system is the guarantor of this type of "deal" through the "multi-bi" model, allowing bilateral public donors to hide behind it, to manage this new type of polyarchy in peace, to use the concept of R. Dahl (Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City, 1961, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), even though it refers to only two dimensions of democracy: the right to participate in elections and the political process and the right to public dissent. It evolves towards a semblance of market democracy as soon as the "promotion of the Senegalese businessman" initiative is adopted, allowing one to be a senior civil servant by day and an entrepreneur by night, until the fund is exhausted. An initiative that definitively structures the relationship between the State and the Senegalese private sector, the unions and civil society when they are still demanding, albeit unconsciously, the renewal. The obstacles that slow down any progress towards a de facto democracy are also internal when bureaucracy is set up as de jure systems of government.

From the 1990s onwards, timid changes gradually led the public administration to a new system that gave more space to policy culture in the hope that it would spread to all institutions and citizens. National expertise is involved for the first time in a foresight exercise (Senegal, 2015), even if the strategic methodology imposed by expatriate staff is inadequate. Meanwhile, still from Senegal, another is being conducted at the initiative of the United Nations at the level of the Franc Zone and Africa in the face of monetary Europe, giving rise to all kinds of attempts at capture and diversion through bilateral cooperation, including the injunction to replicate the European model of economic and monetary union without reference to the exercise sponsored by the United Nations. This is a reminder of the monopoly on any regional initiative or new idea. The assessment of the capacity of the public administration to implement projects is a tipping point towards a whole series of exercises exclusively reserved for this national expertise, including the popularization of the Jansson Report, which revolutionized the intervention model of United Nations agencies. As a result, there is an urgent need to reorient the curriculum of economist planners towards policy analysis science (Idep/Uneca) throughout Africa and beyond. For Senegal, this also resulted in the first planning exercise without any donor participation (9th Plan), followed by the development of key policies including the mapping of the innovation system, the promotion of competitiveness clusters and incubators (start-up), financial policy, and public expenditure management policy. To the great displeasure of foreign expertise, which sees it as a danger to its supremacy and cannot believe that so many innovative approaches are spreading in a former colony when it must remain so at all costs. To the great displeasure also of part of the national expertise for whom "Senegal is not an emerging financial market economy but a Social State according to Article 1 of its Constitution", "Senegal has been a Socialist Republic since its independence!"

It was necessary simultaneously to "twist the arm" of the Government and the "invisible hand" that watches over the PAS in order to get out of the period of austerity after having forced the former to clean up the budgetary system full of "special funds", to demonstrate to the latter that its "Comprehensive Development Framework" imposed like an empty shell was not adapted to the realities of the country and to propose an alternative that would operationalizes it to the point of seeing it replicated in other countries under structural adjustment.

Hence the foreseeable break as soon as the prospect of truly being a democracy became a reality in 2000. The new system put in place claims to be "market democracy", the latter being entirely held by a liberal "invisible hand". The new policy of remuneration of state employees, which doubles the salary of civil servants, creates a misunderstanding when at the beginning it was simply a question of repairing an injustice resulting from their blockage during more than two decades of austerity and above all of setting up a new incentive system for performance in view of a more favorable economic outlook. It is interpreted as an open door to all those excesses resulting from market democracy: plutocracy, kleptocracy...

However, this was without counting on the tragedy of September 11, 2001, seen as an attack on democracy. The rest of the world is suddenly locked in the Axis of Evil until it proves otherwise. Immediately, 43 countries agreed to join the coalition in the Iraqi "shock and awe" operation of 20 March 2003 despite the opposition of others within the UN, including China, Russia, Germany and France. While the position of the first three is considered understandable given their history, that of the fourth is described as a betrayal that is all the more unacceptable as it still remains a member of NATO. The punishment inflicted on this member of the Security Council explains Senegal's posture. Not having joined the coalition either, like all the other French-speaking countries in Africa, he gave the change by proclaiming loud and clear (2003) that he was part of the American model, which would have taken only a century to embody democracy and development, unlike Europe. However, this assertion is called into question by the work of A. Maddison (OECD). He added two layers by claiming a larger market share in the management of the regional central bank (2006) and then by demanding the withdrawal of the French military base (2010). This is enough to classify him in another axis of the evil pronounced by the main target of American punishments, accused of insidiously wanting to reorganize NATO in his favor instead of resigning from it, if only to be consistent with his choice not to participate in the coalition against Iraq

Beyond these events, the main effect of the tragedy of 9/11 on Africa, especially French-speaking Africa, is the fall in the democratic index to the point of structuring a Kaki Belt in less than two decades. Since 2000 alone, 42 pushes in Africa, including 26 in French-speaking countries. The reason for this is the multiplication of mistakes (Libya) and traps (Syria, Sahel) resulting from the sentence pronounced by C. Rice, causing instability, conflicts and coups d'état, up to the forced withdrawal of military bases.

This was all it took to create the conditions for a change of regime thanks to a new selection procedure that is all the more subtle and sophisticated because it always goes unnoticed: as soon as one of the most prestigious and influential Think Tanks in the world invites him to a conference, he is endorsed by the "State is Me" in office. The success was so impressive that the principle of replicating this stratagem was made official: all those who aspired to the supreme executive position must now be pre-selected at the end of a conference. We know what happened next: never has his mentor had so much influence in Africa while it was declining sharply everywhere else. An influence that even allows it to oppose any transfer of the attributes of monetary sovereignty at the regional level, particularly in West Africa. This is how so many democracies turn into kleptocracy or market, kakistocracy or selective, plutocracy or pluralist. No wonder that the Senegalese people are once again shouting in 2024 "Enough! I Am Democracy!

The aim is to anticipate the implications of globalization for democracy in each of the scenarios - exclusive, inclusive, extensive, intensive - before drawing a conclusion on the role of the United Nations system in the institutionalization of democracy everywhere, even if it means revising the Charter and its organizational chart. The main lesson learned from the Senegalese experience is to make it a case study on the occasion of the UN80 "Summit on the Future of Democracy" in the hope of encouraging other countries to share their case. Preferably in at least each of the following categories.

How to choose:

• Undemocratic system of government: These are countries that openly assume that they are not democracies. For example: Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Brunei, Afghanistan, Vatican...
• Market democracy: This group includes a number of countries classified according to the EIU index as "full democracy" or "flawed democracy". Example: Canada, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, Taiwan...
• Former Empire wishing without admitting it to regain their possession or glacis (hinterland): UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Russia, Japan...
• Kakitsocracy: Countries that have provoked or suffered a coup d'état since 2000 Polyarchy: all the others