Hyden (2006) African politics in a comparative perspective

This is a great book for someone who wants an overview on the current state of the field. Hyden wrote this book in an effort not just to summarize but to try and tie together the different threads of literature on African politics from the last 20 years. I have to say that at first i was really biased..in general I don't like reading books that start of with the author telling us that he watched Africa from above seriously! But is a great piece of work that is mainly  focused on 10 hot topics (my description not his). 

Why does Africa matter today?

1. Informal sector -It is the best place to study the role of informal institutions. Of course most of my examples are based on Zimbabwe but I am thinking of the role of the informal banking sector during the 2008 economic crisis. It is also interesting to think of corruption as an informal sector but does shape the way that goods and services are exchanged on the continent. 
1. Globalization has had a huge impact on the continent especially on the growing gap between the rich and the poor. I was reading an NYT article the other day on some big shot criminal turned businessman in SA who has these major parties in Sandton were the highlight of the night is him eating sushi of off the bodies of naked women. These parties easily run over $200, 000 in a country were some people can not afford basic amenities. The gap between the wealthy and the poor in Africa is growing at an alarming rate. One wealthy Chiyangwa a Zimbabwean businessmen a gave a tour of his more than 10 high class vehicles (I know nothing abut cars and could butcher the names if I tried). Along with globalization and the wealth disparities is it possible that Africa is a breeding ground for terrorism?
2. Africa’s geography- let us take another look at the continents geography and what that means for future economic and political development. Herbts developed an impressive theory which links the continents’’ woes to its geography.  He argues that the problems we see civil war etc are because the central government does not have control over their territories. Here Hyden suggests that the geography is important for three reasons
1. The continent is far from other parts of the worls explaining the late colonialism which he then links to poor development. I am sure most think the late colonialism is not such a bad thing because at least the continent retained much of its indigenous culture when compared to South America for example.
2. The climate and vegetation discouraged the movement of people namely discouraged Europeans who might have brought some knowledge etc
3. The main rivers the Nile, Congo, Niger and Zambezi which have been difficult to travel.
3. History – Hyden would like to remind us that Africa’s history does not begin with colonialism. According to Hyden the colonial period lasted from 1884-1960 but again the continent was not fully independent until 1994.
4. Africa’s economy- The continent is full of natural resources and yet the world’s bottom billion live in Africa (Collier). As I discussed earlier the continent has its share of wealthy people but the inequality compares only to Latin America. In more equal countries like Burundi and Rwanda everyone is equally poor. Globalization has skipped Africa and onto Asia the region remains economically marginalized. Part of it has to do with the politics of the region but I also the continent has not done enough to woo investors. There is a lot of money to be made in Africa.
5. The politics-All by two of the 48 sub-saharan countries are colonies (we all know the song from capetown to cairo….) so I won’t dwell too much on this. The puzzle is not so much with colonialism but what happened after independence. In the 1960’s the world as jubilant as country after country gained independence but what looked like promising democratic rule deteriorated into authoritarianism- we can talk of the big men rule here from Mobutu (whose name is always fun to say), Ggabango etc.  Multiparty politics did not do too well in the immediate years after independence. None or very few of the countries have programmatic politics were politicians campaign on policy issues and not identity politics. There is a major policy deficit on the continent and this is not due to some shortage of real policy issues but because it is less costly for politicians to use patronage or identity politics than talk about policy. The politicians on the continent have done too much politics and very little politics. The short film of friends at the bank details how economic decisions have become political decisions and that is really bad for economic growth.

The continent is now more dependent on external aid than ever before – we would expect that this dependency should be declining but clearly this has not been the case.

Hyden shares some gloomy stats with us here

1. 1999 one fifth of all Africans lived in a war torn country.
2. 28 wars were fought btwn 1970-2004
3. the Sudanese civil war cost over two million people , one million died in Rwanda in 1994, about half a million people died in the Angola civil war that lasted 27 years.