DEALING WITH CORRUPT ION:

STRONG MEN VERSUS STRONG

INSTITUTIONS

Solomon Appiah

When President Obama took office, his first visit to the continent of
Africa was to Ghana and once there, he delivered the ‘Remarks by The
U.S. President to The Ghanaian Parliament’ at the Accra International
Conference Center on July 11, 2009 at 12:40 P.M. GMT. In Obama’s
speech, he made the following statement which has driven many a
discourse over Africa’s development since then:

“Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions”.1

During a later visit, in his speech to the African union, President

Obama reiterated the following:

When I first came to Sub-Saharan Africa as a President, I said

that Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong
institutions. (Applause.) And one of those institutions can
be the African Union.2

ANALYSING OBAMA’s RHETORIC

Though such statements may be well meaning and sound smart, they are
devoid of wisdom. A statement like this is the reason why corruption
still prospers on the continent. This is because it elevates
structures and systems above creators, drivers and operators of
structures and system institutions.

You may have the best institutions in the world e.g. the African Union
or the Parliament of a country, but if the system drivers of human
beings driving or operating the institutions are bereft of values,
ethics and character, those institutions will amount to nothing.

1 https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-
ghanaian-parliament
2 https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/28/remarks-
president-obama-people-africa

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Let us compare the country with the least perception of corruption,
New Zealand with the country with the worst corruption perception,
that is, Somalia. New Zealand supposedly has the best institutions in
the world and Somalia the worst. If all Somalians were relocated to
New Zealand and all New Zealanders relocated to Somalia, I submit that
in a few months or years, Somalia would be developed and New Zealand
retrogressed in development.

If the strong institutions are more important than strong men, then
when all Somalians are sent to New Zealand, New Zealand independent
of its new citizens should continue improving and developing. But we
know this will not be the case. They will retrogress because of the
lack of competent men to drive and operate the institutions.

Strong institutions are desirable and needed but strong men are even
more important than the institutions because institutions are created
and operated by men not robots. Men are not created by institutions.
When the moral fabric of a nation decays, it does not matter how
strong the institutions are, corruption will still persist. This is
the challenge in Africa.

QUALITY OF LEADERSHIP

There needs to be a reconceptualization of leadership on the African

continent. The current public educational system on the continent does
not produce leaders but politicasters.

A politicaster is defined as:

“A petty politician; a pretender in politics”.3

It is also defined as:

“an unstatesmanlike practitioner of politics: a petty or

contemptible politician”.4

"a petty, feeble, or contemptible politician".5

Notice the first definition from the 1828 Noah Webster’s Dictionary
is “a pretender in politics”. This is because Webster’s definition of
a politic from the same dictionary is:

POL'ITIC, a. [L. politicus; Gr. a city.]

1. Wise; prudent and sagacious in devising and pursuing measures

adapted to promote the public welfare; applied to persons; as a
politic prince.

3 http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/Politicaster
4 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/politicaster
5 http://www.dictionary.com/browse/politicaster

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 2. Well devised and adapted to the public prosperity; applied
to things.6

Africa’s problem is that it has many politicasters who pretend they

are there to promote the public welfare and prosperity when in fact
they are there for self-aggrandizement. These persons are produced by
the current educational system, as well as other social structures
within some countries on the continent. That is not to say however
that there are no good leaders on the continent.

There are good politicians on the continent of course but it would

seem that bad nuts outnumber the good. Great examples of good
politicians include Paul Kagame and John Magufuli. These men have
managed to drive the institutions within their countries in such a
way as to promote development and security. Institutions don’t drive
men. Men create and drive institutions. For this reason, the place
of character cannot be underestimated.

EXAMPLES OF CORRUPTION

Africa undergoes cycles of booms in economic growth but these booms

do not profit the ordinary people because of politicasters and the
corruption they promote.

Equatorial Guinea has been one of the world’s fastest growing

economies over the past 15 years. But its HDI rank is 91 places
below its wealth ranking. No country registers a wider gap.
Vietnam is 8 places higher in the HDI rankings, even though it
has an average income one-sixth of the level in Equatorial
Guinea. Countries with a comparable income – including Poland
and Hungary – are around 100 places further up the HDI rankings.

Angola has an average income 25 per cent higher than Indonesia’s,

but it is 24 places lower on the HDI. Life expectancy in Angola
is 18 years less than in Indonesia.

Gabon has an HDI–income gap of 40 places. Its average income is

equivalent to that of Malaysia, but the two countries are
separated by 45 places in the HDI table. 7

Let us consider examples of corruption on the continent and the common

denominator—institutions or men? In a report produced by the Kofi
Annan chaired African Progress Panel titled the 2013 Africa Progress
Report: Stewarding Africa’s Natural Resources for All, the following
revelations came up:

In 2009, a French judge decided to investigate in response to a

lawsuit filed by the non-government organization Transparency
International, which accused Presidents Omar Bongo Ondimba of
Gabon, Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo and Teodoro

6 Webster’s 1828 Dictionary

7 2013 Africa Progress Report ; UNDP (2011), Human Development Report,
accessed April 2013

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 Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea of buying luxury homes
with state funds.

Sassou Nguesso allegedly owned 24 estates and operated 112 bank

accounts in France, while Bongo and his relatives allegedly owned
about 30 luxurious estates on the French Riviera and in Paris
and its suburbs.

Cases brought in the United States against President Teodoro

Obiang Nguema Mbasogo’s son Teodoro Obiang Mangue, who is a
government minister, cast further light on the scale of the
assets accumulated. The US Justice Department’s civil forfeiture
action against assets allegedly acquired with money stolen from
the people of Equatorial Guinea details items of property
including a Gulfstream jet, a variety of cars – including eight
Ferraris, seven Rolls-Royces and two Bugattis – a 12-acre estate
in Malibu valued at US$38 million, and white gloves previously
owned by Michael Jackson.

The wealth accumulated by the Gabonese political elite during

the four-decade presidency of Omar Bongo is evidenced in
buildings and property prices that would not be out of place in
high-income suburbs of France, where the late president also
owned 39 luxury properties. One journalist has described
Libreville, the capital of Gabon, as “a living museum of
kleptocracy” financed by oil wealth.

[Angola’s] oil wealth that has delivered fortunes for the few
has left most Angolans – including Luanda’s slum dwellers – in
grinding poverty … In 2013, Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of
Angola’s president, became the first African woman to enter the
Forbes list of billionaires after she bought large stakes in
Portuguese media and financial companies, building on her
holdings of stocks in Angola’s largest bank and a 25 percent
share in the telecommunications company, Unitel.

Between 2010 and 2012, the DRC lost at least US$1.36 billion in
revenues from the underpricing of mining assets that were sold
to offshore companies. Each citizen of the DRC lost the
equivalent of US$21 from the underpricing of concession assets
–7 per cent of average income Across the five deals, assets were
sold on average at one-sixth of their estimated commercial market
value. Assets valued in total at US$1.63 billion were sold to
offshore companies for US$275 million. The beneficial ownership
structure of the companies concerned is unknown. Offshore
companies were able to secure very high profits from the onward
sale of concession rights. The average rate of return across the
five deals examined was 512 per cent, rising to 980 per cent in
one deal.8

8 2013 Africa Progress Report; The author of this paper was part of the
team that produced the 2013 Africa Progress Report in Geneva

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CONCLUSION: STRONG MEN OR INSTITUTIONS?

Now from the above, what does Africa need? Strong men or strong
institutions? Let us assume Africa did have strong institutions but
then you have the likes of Omar Bongo Ondimba, Denis Sassou Nguesso,
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo or Isabel dos Santos as leaders, the
institutions would be rendered of no effect. However, if these leaders
were not to be politicasters but men and women with values, character
and patriotic, they could drive institutions to produce inclusive
development for their nations.

The U.S. has some of the oldest institutions in the world and yet H.E.
Donald Trump has had to fight tooth and nail just to get them to do
the right thing. The simple reason is predecessors populated these
structures with persons with certain agendas contrary to the one
Donald Trump espouses.

If Africa is to develop, what it needs is a systematic way to develop

a new cadre of leadership hopefully with a single vision emanating
from the African Union. Its curricula would have to be overhauled.
Participatory democracy would have to be resurrected where ordinary
citizens drive discussions on what type of nations they want to live
in and consequently what type of policies should pertain in their
jurisdictions. No more governments taking arbitrary decisions like
the controversial U.S.—Ghana Defence Cooperation Agreement being
passed through Ghana’s parliament within less than 24 hours without
recourse to Ghanaian citizens and their concerns. African governments
must be made to be accountable to their people. Currently there is
too much abuse of power. Also, the winner-takes-all disease within
the political sphere must be curbed. A big challenge is that many
African nations do not have a single national vision that all political
parties must adhere to. Each party comes with its own manifesto that
feeds its policies and they discontinue former projects by their
predecessors causing financial loss to the state. This nonsense must
be curbed. True politic involves being wise; prudent and sagacious in
devising and pursuing measures adapted to promote the public welfare.

Africa needs to nurture leaders whose aim is simply true politic not
politicasting!