Are Wars And Poor Governance Africa´S Main Scourge?

Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany
Department of Economics
Empirical Research Group
Prof. Stephan KLASEN, Ph. D.
Course “Economic Development of Africa”
Summer Term 2003
Term Paper by Zalán Andreas LANG
Matr. No. 100977304891


Are Wars and Poor Governance Africa´s Main Scourge?

1. Introduction
Only recently, I read a shocking article in a well-known German newspaperabout the current situation of Liberia (Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 29th/30th, 2003, 3). Liberia has been stricken into war since 1989. President Charles Taylor fights with troops of ten thousands of children against two other rebel groups. 10% of the population has fled the country between 1989 and 1997. When a prominent UN official attended the capital this year in order to meet Taylor and to demandpeace talks, the president declined to see him. Since Taylor has large control over Liberia´s diamond and exotic woods and an estimated wealth of 3 billion US-$, he has well the means to keep on financing the war. At the same time, it is reported in the article that ironically one of Taylor´s ministers himself told the UN official that 95 % of the Liberian population lives below poverty line. Soobviously the government knows very well about the humanitarian disaster but it does not take any interest in it. Tragically, nor the rebel groups give rise to hope since they are also as brutal against the civilian population.
Quite characteristically, the fact that press and media coverage seem to focus much on extremely negative news from Sub-Saharan Africa, has significantly affected ourpicture of the continent. In public opinion therefore wars and poor governance doom Africa[1] to poverty and underdevelopment. A very common view is that wars in Africa are due to the ethnic diversity in many countries, where racial tensions perpetuate, and since ethnic diversity is given exogenously, one can hardly do anything about it. In this paper, however, after giving a pattern of Africanconflicts in Section 2. A., I will try to explain which factors really determine the occurrence of wars (Section 2. B.). It turns out that wars themselves do not evolve by accident, so a problem of wars lies less with their mere existence than rather with their causes. Some consequences of wars as a major scourge for Africa are briefly discussed in Section 2.C.
Among others, one important determinantof wars is previous poor governance. Since poor governance also hurts the overall economy, in Section 3 I will try to illustrate its causes and consequences. Section 4 concludes with policy implications regarding governance.

2. A. Pattern of African conflicts
At first look, general facts and figures about African conflicts convey a very sad picture. Out of 53 African countries about 20 havefaced at least one domestic conflict since independence. It is estimated that in 1999 20% of Africa´s population had to live in countries which have been seriously disrupted by armed conflicts during the past 10 years (World Bank, 2000, 55). Currently, there are about 8 civil wars in Africa. About one third of all major conflicts in the world during the last decade have taken place in Africa.Besides, wars in Africa seem to be particularly violent: In 1999, 90 % of the casualties in wars or civil conflicts were civilians. Nowhere else in the world is the number of victims higher for a given unit of time (Elbadawi and Sambanis, 2000, 7). In 1994, a massacre between Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda claimed 500,000 lives within 3 months (World Bank 2000, 58).

However, on the other hand we also seethat about 30 African countries have not suffered from any major conflict at all since independence, so the widespread view that the whole of Africa is seriously and permanently threatened by the risk of wars can easily be dismissed; in fact the majority of African countries is relatively peaceful.

Among others, an important feature of African wars is that the vast majority of them has taken...