The Africa Governance Papers

The China-US digital competition in Africa and other current issues in African governance

Richard Bartholomew Jurgens — 2023-10-31

TAGP is an independent academic peer-reviewed journal published by Good Governance Africa (GGA). TAGP aims to support and develop the organisation’s internal research capabilities by providing its researchers with opportunities to publish peer-reviewed research and work on governance issues by upcoming and established researchers from across Africa. Early-career researchers are offered the experience of a rigorous and demanding peer review and revision process that contributes significantly to their ability to carry out quality research and to prepare work for publication in other academic journals. Established researchers are offered a platform for exploring themes in their ongoing research that apply particularly appropriately to informing governance performance in Africa.

TAGP does not publish issues focusing exclusively on specific themes at present, though we have some exciting plans for particular themes in the future.

This issue features several articles on the implications of the competition between China and the US for digital influence in Africa. Tyler Venske highlights key hurdles to Africa’s digital independence. Cliff Mboya examines the implications of the rivalry for African countries’ foreign policy postures, applying rational choice theory to a study of “an emerging strategy of agency in Kenya”. Thomas Lethoba examines the “US-China standoff over digital supremacy in Africa” in a media context and finds evidence of bias on both sides. Amodani Gariba finds that African autocracies are exploiting China’s model of the internet to roll back democratic gains through surveillance and censorship of civil liberties.

GGA colleagues Pranish Desai and Dr Ross Harvey use an econometric model to show that the SADC is suffering a statistically significant trend in deindustrialisation when compared with other African regions and proposes adjustments to the current SADC Industrialisation Strategy (2015-2063). Terence Corrigan discusses Dr Christine Hobden’s Citizenship in a Globalised World (2022), which adopts a “broadly liberal” approach with the individual as the basic unit of analysis but develops a theory of citizenship as “the construction of societal collectives and their moral obligations”.

Professor David Benatar, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town, contributes an extended review essay on Dr Max Price’s recent book, Statues and Storms: Leading Through Change (2023), a memoir of the author’s experiences as vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, focusing mainly on the “Fallist protests” from early 2015 until the end of 2016. Finally, Sara Houmada, with the African Peer Review Mechanism Continental Secretariat, discusses the African Union’s review of its First Ten-Year Implementation Plan (FTYIP) in support of Agenda 2063 and argues that many of the challenges faced by African countries in addressing Agenda 2063’s challenges could be positively influenced by a focused and conscious adoption of the social contract model of governance around the continent.

To conclude, this issue provides a range of research and research-based arguments in several areas that demonstrate TAGP’s commitment to depth and breadth in pursuing research on governance. With growing interest and support from our widening circle of academic researchers, the journal aims to build on this approach even further in coming issues.

Towards the second decade of Agenda 2063: Embracing a resilient social contract with African citizens

Sara Houmada — 2023-10-31

The first ten-year implementation plan (FTYIP) of Agenda 2063: The Africa we want drew to a close this year. Member states of the African Union and the AU institutions, led by the AU Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) as well as the AU Commission (AUC), have worked closely and collaborative- ly over the past five years to galvanise implementation of the plan. Empirical findings of continental reporting concerning the aims of Agenda 2063 revealed some progress towards implementing most of its aspirations, particularly as regards improving governance and promoting the rule of law in Africa. This commentary paper argues that African leaders and organs need to embrace Agenda 2063 as a social contract between African citizens, leaders and AU organs if the aspirations of Agenda 2063 are to be achieved.

Deploying the concept of global citizenship: Christine Hobden on citizenship in a globalised world

Terence Corrigan — 2024-01-29

Citizenship is a concept that is ubiquitous to contemporary senses of political being but not universally understood – and certainly not understood in depth. Christine Hobden’s Citizenship in a Globalised World attempts to grapple with this question. As the title suggests, a central concern of this work is the operation of citizenship across – or more accurately expressed “above” – borders. From the outset, she evinces a suspicion of the borders that regulate citizenship in its common understanding. “Contemporary citizens,” she writes, “appear to use citizenship as a framework to turn inward and to shore up the borders at their backs. We live in an era where it is possible for the super-wealthy to buy citizenship and for thousands to die in pursuit of it. In a deeply unequal world, the apparent value of citizenship varies drastically between states. While this reality is contested by many, on the whole, it tends to lead to a widespread effort to protect one’s more “valuable”citizenship from would-be citizens who are deemed unworthy and unable to contribute” (Hobden, 2021, p.3). As the tenor of this extract makes clear, Hobden’s argument is framed around a concern for a model of citizenship that embodies and promotes justice. The book is both an analysis and a work of advocacy.

Navigating digital sovereignty in Africa: A review of key challenges and constraints

Tyler Venske — 2023-12-23

This paper examines the evolving global digital landscape from an African perspective. To do this, the paper problematises the concept of “digital sovereignty” in the African context by exploring the continent’s unique challenges. While investments by the United States (US) and particularly China in digital infrastructure projects have increased connectivity and improved lives, they raise ongoing concerns about Africa’s over-reliance on external partners and the implications of data exploitation and surveillance for the continent’s digital independence. Growing out of these concerns, the central argument of this paper is the need to delink African nation-states from foreign influence and control of the digital sector and to rearticulate or reframe the latter in terms of digital sovereignty. In this light, the paper contends that mainstream research on the Fourth Industrial Revolution in the African con- text does not sufficiently look past the power repertoires and dynamics of the US and China – wheth- er blaming or crediting - when theorising digital sovereignty. Instead, the paper argues that to fully understand the African continent’s battle to establish and maintain a coherent framework for digital independence, it is essential to consider the challenges and constraints of digital sovereignty. Drawing on a review of extant literature, the paper springboards off a set of broad themes and case studies to deepen understanding and highlight key hurdles to Africa’s digital independence. The paper suggests that African nations must strive to overcome risks to digital sovereignty if the latter is to genuinely empower nation-states and citizens in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

African agency and the new foreign policy response to the US’s Huawei ban: Evidence from Kenya

Cliff Mboya — 2023-10-31

As rivalry between China and the United States (US) for global dominance of the digital landscape intensifies, countries across the globe are responding to the impact, with serious implications for their foreign policy postures. This article extends the concept of rational choice to an examination of strat- egies directed by China and the US to influence African policy positions. By applying this framework to an examination of the Huawei ban in the US and pressure on its allies to follow suit, the article distinguishes the overriding emphasis of research on global power competition and foreign policy- making on the interests and values of China and the US from an emerging strategy of agency in Kenya. The rational choice perspective enables us to understand what informs Kenya’s interests, preferences, choices, and foreign policy decisions in the US Huawei ban. By focusing on the role of domestic factors shaping Kenya’s foreign policy choices, we come to see how individuals, local businesses, consumers, interest groups, bureaucracies, and policymakers in Kenya are self-interested rational actors influenc- ing collective action and shaping the country’s policy choices rather than passive recipients of great power influences. The article aims to contribute to a strategy of re-centring domestic actors in Kenya’s foreign policymaking and exerting their agency in the rivalry between China and the US.

Enter the dragon: The impact of China’s digital authoritarianism on democracy in Africa

Amodani Gariba — 2023-10-31

An emerging discourse contends that China has become a willing collaborator for digital technology abuse through substantial investments in Africa’s digital infrastructure, thus leaving digital power at the discretion of unstable African governments. However, it is unclear whether Chinese companies are willing collaborators with autocratic regimes in advancing China’s model of digital authoritarian- ism in the African continent. Despite the need to better understand the changing dynamics of China’s role in aiding authoritarian regimes through digital technologies, research that responds to these concerns remains empirically understudied and under-conceptualised. The central question this paper addresses is: How does China’s model of digital authoritarianism affect autocratic politics and the trajectory of authoritarian regimes in Africa? The article’s primary objective is to investigate allegations that China is promoting its internet model, which includes censorship and restrictions, through digital investments in African countries. A related aim is to examine how African governments have abused their digital infrastructure to undermine their electoral processes and roll back democratic gains made since the early 1990s. In grappling with these concerns, part of this paper’s contribution is to explore critical practices and meanings of power that appear to have produced trajectories towards digital authoritarianism in Africa. The paper’s main departure point is the proposition that democratic rollbacks can be only partially understood by tracing China’s digital footprints on the continent. The article finds proliferating discourses that China is exporting an authoritarian digital authoritarianism model to Africa misleading. Instead, the evidence suggests that African autocracies are exploiting the adoption of China’s model of the internet to roll back democratic gains through surveillance and censorship of civil liberties.

Media wars: A comparative assessment of the role of US-China media outlets in the battle for digital hegemony in Africa

Thomas Lethoba — 2023-10-31

Between 2017 and 2018, US President Donald Trump introduced a Section 301 investigation into China’s trade practices following allegations of unfair trade practices against China (Bown & Kolb, 2018). The battlelines first emerged when China surpassed the US in 2009 to become Africa’s largest trading partner, having signed bilateral trade agreements with over 40 countries in the African continent. By the second decade of the 2000s, the rise of the digital economy, estimated to grow at between 15% and 25% annually in emerging countries (WEF, 2017), drew Africa into the crosshairs of the US-China trade war. Between 2018 and 2023, over 36 Chinese high-tech companies were blacklisted by the US, citing concerns over national security (Sevastopulo et al., 2022). Against this background, the article places the US-China standoff over digital supremacy in Africa in a media context, bringing novel dimensions into consideration that illuminate a media war focused on competing hegemonic agendas. The article springboards off Bastiansen et al. (2019, pp. 5-8) to argue that the trade war be- tween the two countries presents an ideal setting to study partisan and elite perspectives reflected in news reporting on the international conflict. By expanding the scope of analysis to the media as a mode of information, the article’s main departure point is that the trade war between the two countries that began in 2009, when China surpassed the US to become Africa’s largest trading partner, is being interlocuted through the agency of soft power, with media outlets playing a pivotal role in shaping public biases. A central theme emerging from the research is that media publications have clear biases. Generally, the US news media outlets analysed are heavily critical of the Chinese government and its cutting-edge technologies in Africa. In contrast, the popular Chinese media outlets analysed adopt a defensive stance in their responses to the US. Revealing this through thematic analysis can contribute valuable insights into the dynamics of the tech war between China and the US.

Is the Southern African Development Community afflicted by premature deindustrialisation?

Pranish Desai — 2023-10-31

A key driver of growing youth unemployment across African economies I identified by Rodrik (2016) as “premature deindustrialisation”, where developing countries move out of labour-absorp- tive, low-income manufacturing and into low value-added services sooner than their industrialised counterparts did historically. Developing countries also make this transition at lower rates of per capita income than their wealthier peers. Traditionally, manufacturing has been the primary channel through which employment growth has occurred, creating a sustained middle class and strengthening the political equilibrium (Acemoglu et al., 2019). A preliminary descriptive analysis of African manufacturing performance reveals starkly divergent trajectories between the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and non-SADC countries. SADC’s output and employment growth as a measure of manufacturing performance is worse than that of non-SADC countries in Africa. This paper quantitatively examines whether SADC is an outlier, controlling for intervening variables. Specifically, we employ econometric modelling focusing on introducing decade-region interaction effects to ascertain whether SADC suffers a statistically significant difference in industrialisation trends when compared with countries. We account for this discrepancy by referring to the weak performance of SADC’s dominant economy, South Africa, and further consider whether the industrialisation prospects of other SADC countries are adversely impacted by a relatively strong reliance on oil and mineral rents. Finally, we propose some adjustments to the current SADC Industrialisation Strategy (2015-2063).

Max Price's statues and storms

David Benatar — 2023-10-31

Professor David Benatar, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town, contributes an extended review essay on Dr Max Price’s recent book, Statues and Storms: Leading Through Change (2023), a memoir of the author’s experiences as vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, focusing mainly on the “Fallist protests” from early 2015 until the end of 2016. During that time, “protesters shut down the university and engaged in intimidation, assault, and arson, with an ever-increasing list of demands. Dr Price himself was subjected to verbal abuse and physical assault”, writes Professor Benatar. His review is sympathetic to the challenges Dr Price faced, praising his coolness and patience. However, he also critically examines Dr Price’s view that he was forced to take “unpopular decisions” during tumultuous times, arguing that unpopular decisions are “only courageous if they are also the right ones”.