Over the last six years we have worked in several African countries. We have observed that overall, governments are failing to meet the expectations and desires of the of citizens in most African countries. We analysed Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia as critical case studies regularly assessing the performance of their governments versus what their citizens want. It is evident to see that in these and other countries’ governments are performing below average; inequality is increasing and rarely do they have the capacity to sustainably turn around on their election promises. The result is deepening inequality, growing poverty, and growing dissatisfaction amongst communities.
Tendai Murisa, Executive Director of SIVIO Institute, highlights that even though many would expect that these countries would fall into anarchy and chaos, they continue to survive. In a recent blog post by Tendai (The Big Bet), he makes this assessment after many years of observation, and engagement with citizens, associations, and African governments. Tendai is raising the prominence of associational life which we believe has kept these communities going. What we see in our research at SIVIO Institute is that engaged communities (working through networks of individuals in small groups of 10, 100, or even up to 10,000) are the fabric of society, far away from the public eye but active in creating economic, political, and societal networks which address social welfare challenges and needs. These associations are what has kept Africa going, not the political parties! We do not discount the role of government, but in our assessment, associations should take the bulk of the credit, not government or political players.
Read more on the Big Bet by Tendai Murisa, the Executive Director of SIVIO Institute.
Read more of Tendai’s work here.
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