By Hugue Nkoutchou

Founder at the Public Policy in AfricaInitiative (PPiAI)

As the founder of a think tank based in Africa that is developing alternatives to the existing policies most prominent for our economies on the continent, I have always wanted to spend 30 minutes with our presidents. I believe that African governments should take a scientific approach towards policy and make use of it to guide their decisions, ideally alongside their close advisers. It is clear that the way Africa’s governments are approaching development has not and will not bring prosperity for their respective broader societies within the next decade(s), in which this is unnecessary if leaders take bold and courageous decisions now that are pragmatic yet evidence-informed and affordable.

Focus on making businesses and entrepreneurs happy. Financial resources are scarce. So, governments should focus on supporting them instead of dispersing efforts onto many areas of development.

I will lay out a framework of the underlying infrastructures that are needed to support entrepreneurs facilitating economic development within the country. Instead of African leaders taking a state-led approach and spreading their resources too thin across multiple development initiatives, they should focus on setting a positive underlying infrastructure for entrepreneurs to spur private development, a model that was successful in other contexts like Singapore or the developed Gulf States. This would include democratizing energy access, reducing corruption, implementing reforms ineducation to support skills needed in the private sector, and upgrading physical infrastructure.

Firstly, African leaders should prioritize energy. More specifically, they need to become more intentional about energy production, transportation and distribution. For entrepreneurs and foreign direct investment schemes to do well, electricity should be cheap and reliable.This provides a good incentive for foreign investors who are interested inentering the industry sector of the continent’s, especially within the contextof the African Continental Free Trade Area. Many existing companies within the industry sector have stopped their operations not due to poor management, but because of unreliable and unaffordable electricity; given financial constraints, they cannot afford off-grid solutions like solar. If energy were accessible, they could restart production and begin hiring people. Moreover, facilitating energy production and distribution will enable African countries to process their critical minerals and raw material locally, increasing value addition and economic growth. While seen as just a repository for cheap commodities like rare earth metals, the continent should compete with America and China as well; to do so, African countries should subsidize electricity consumption for local companies that process critical minerals as well as raw materials.

Moving on, we have the issue of corruption. Corruption has a parasitic relationship with the underlying social, political, and technological infrastructure needed to support entrepreneur and private-led economic growth in Africa. Rent-seeking by the ruling class leads to a poor business environment, which subsequently hinders fiscal improvement. Our leaders should streng then the fight against corruption by:

● Deregulating heavily the business environment: Deregulation stifles corruption while promoting economic freedom. In some Sub-Saharan Africa countries, to obtain a business permit, license and authorization, it would require entering several public offices. The more offices one enters and the more officials engaged with, the higher the risk of corruption. Aone-stop-shop for key business sectors’ licenses and permits should be established.

● Implementing reliable third-party accountability mechanisms: Civil society, in particular the independent press and religious leaders, should have permanent members of committees that should be in charge of the monitoring and evaluation of state budgets. These include but are not limited to ministerial, parliamentary, and technical committees.

● Severely stifle rent-seeking: Corruptions should be punished using heavier fines as amply discussed by Gary Becker in his works, along with prison sentences

To support the previous improvements in the underlying infrastructure needed to support private-led development, our African leaders should also strengthen legalities behind private property ownership and contract enforcement. These two would lead to many improvements with one being small businesses having larger access to much-needed financing. As seen in more industrialized countries, the main collaterals banks prefer to see are land and property title deeds. A well-established necessary improvementis a single-entry platform for owners of property assets and insurances in each of the respective African countries that is managed by authorized banks and insurance companies with collaboration from governments.

Additionally is the importance of physical infrastructure to support private-led growth. Currently, there are many relics of previous infrastructure built for extractive instead of value-add purposes.African leaders should not neglect the importance of building highways which link farms to markets as well as leading economic capitals of neighboring countries. It is well documented that 80% of economic goods in Sub-Saharan Africa are transported via roads. Furthermore, a large percentage of our harvest perishes on farms in many Sub-Saharan African countries due to poor road conditions and climatic changes. These two issues are enough incentive to make road and physical infrastructure construction a priority. Also, building a railroad linking key industrial, agricultural and mining zones to ports will facilitate the transport of goods which will maximize growth in related sectors.

Lastly is the issue of skilling that supports private-led development. Regarding the education industrial complex and industry partnerships, our leaders should ensure that schools and universities close the gap between skilling offerings and the labor markets’ needs. An example of responsible policy would be making it mandatory for a representative of school teachers and lecturers to liaise with six to ten local companies within their area of expertise when preparing teaching materials. This will support school curricula being relevant to local enterprises and help prepare our students to solve their communities’ problems. Additionally, the government and private sector should allocate at least 3% of our GDP by 2030 on research and innovation with a focus on the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), powering local innovation and developing homegrown technology.

To finance the implementation of these strategies, we have to trim the size of the government and move away from foreign aid that stifles our independence and the freedom to implement the policies we need.

I call upon our leaders in Africa to be courageous and bold and for the sake of good governance and trim the size of their governments. There is a positive relationship between reduced government and good governance partially due to the deregulation that follows and stifles corruption. Inspired by the work of Milton Friedman, I argue that for all of the governments in Africa, we only need six ministries, those of Defense,(Public) Health, Energy, Justice, Finance and Foreign Affairs. The first three are related to security, justice is the foundation of democracy, finance is obvious, and foreign affairs is essential for managing geopolitical aspects and also maintains the comfort of citizens abroad.

The other ministries should be closed.  For example, when thinking about the Ministries of Education, its budget would be better split between provinces using an evidence-based formula that supports youth aged 25 and below as well as local provinces. Or, the Ministries of Research’s budget can be managed via the Ministry of Finance under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Unit, or another established mechanism. Due to reduced government, this also necessitates that the head of provinces and/or governors should be publicly elected and not nominated by the president, as this reduces heads of states’ power and improves accountability via support of permanent residents of localities.

This is not a comprehensive account of what needs to be done in African countries, but it is an evidence-based start that will burgeon countries’ abilities to achieve their respective development goals. My hope is that our elites will not be short sighted and implement longer-term perspectives to align their interests with those of the people. Tobring them to that place, we need evidence. We need to demonstrate how they would profit in the longer term if they side with the people and compare it to how they benefit now, highlight the large the gap.

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