Abdalla Hamdok, Director for Africa and Middle East, International IDEA
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Interview conducted in Stockholm, 2 September 2008. Abdalla Hamdok is International IDEA's regional Director for Africa and the Middle East.
What would you say are the main challenges for democracy building in Africatoday?
Thank you very much and thank you for this opportunity. Before getting to the challenges, let me start with saying that as an activist and as a democracy supporter in the region, I cannot help but to be an optimist. Africa came from very far. I think today you see all kind of negative reporting from Africa. Yet there are very positive outcomes and achievements in the last ten to 15 years. So let me first start by highlighting those and then I will get to the challenging part of it.
I think the adoption of the African Charter for Democracy, Elections and Governance is a big step in the right direction, a watershed in the democratic development in the continent. Resolution of some conflicts, in Sierra Leone in Liberia, partially in Sudan, the Great Lake situation is a big achievement. Holding of elections in many places, this is a very good achievement. But above all, the establishment of a number of institutions that are now addressing democracy in the continent. The establishment of the AU, the NEPAD, APRM, the Pan African Parliament, the Forum of former African Heads of State, and many others. These are really institutions which will have very serious impact on democratic work in the continent.
Having said this, I don’t want to portray a rosy picture and say that everything is fine and great. Far from that. There are lots of challenges that still remain: Democratic deficit is there, weak institutions including political parties, election management bodies and parliaments. Elections itself, although it is held all over the place it is far from perfect. There are a lot of challenges and problems. We all lived and witnessed election violence in places like Kenya, Zimbabwe and before that in Ethiopia too and in many other places. So there is a lot to be addressed there. And I think even the big achievement in peace and security, there are still areas of conflict remaining in the continent. Côte d’Ivoire and Somalia are still failing states for the last 15 years, and it is probably one of the biggest challenges to Africa, leadership. Darfur, and all over the place. I think these are some of the major challenges which you could call internal to the continent.
There are other challenges and issues related to the external factors. The role of China in Africa is a major issue that needs to be addressed. It is not a simple equation. This is a very complex issue with Africa and its resources, its capital, but at the same time, Africa owes it to itself in the achievement of democracy for the last 10 to 20 years. How would the involvement of China impact on that? It’s an issue that all of us working on democracy need to maybe analyze, dissect and come to a good understanding to it. The war on terror in the continent, it has a lot of implications. I think this is probably briefly some of the challenges of democratic discrepancies in the continent.
International IDEA and the African Union are about to launch a Joint Action Plan for democracy in September in Addis, Ethiopia. Could you tell us a little bit about this plan, why it is important, why it is happening now and how you see International IDEA’s role in it?
This is a very good and interesting question. The IDEA – African Union action plan is to a large degree a response to the challenges that we talked about in the first part of this interview. IDEA started working with the African Union five years ago. It’s a relationship that developed from a very small beginning but being cemented and getting to concrete actions and results through time. It started as building trust and it started as engaging on very serious issues that are challenging democracy building and challenging the AU somewhat. This has culminated last year with the signing of a MoU between IDEA and the African Union by the top two leaders of the institutions, the Secretary-General of IDEA and the Chair of the African Union Commission. It was signed in July 2007 in Accra. The MoU provided the solid ground for embarking on a further action plan that will help in addressing some of these challenges. It is timely, it is relevant and implemented well it has a lot of promise in addressing issues of implementation of the Charter. In fact the activity of the action plan is anchored on the Charter itself and its implementation.
And I must say here that IDEA has worked with the African Union on the Charter from its inception and until it was approved by the Heads of the States and Governments in January 2007. So the joint action plan is premised on the Charter and it has about six chapters addressing issues of democratic institutions, meaning working on the strengthening of the capacity of election management bodies, political parties and others, working on gender and democracy, working on peace and democracy. Also addressing issues of democracy assessments at local and national level and addressing issues of South-South cooperation, sharing of experiences between the global south, mainly Latin America and probably Asia, bringing the comparative knowledge from IDEA’s side to the African continent, provide an opportunity for Africa to be able to share its own experiences and learn from experiences from elsewhere in the world. And IDEA is a perfect partner with the AU in doing that.
Thank you Abdalla!
Interviewer: Monika Ericson, Communications Manager, International IDEA
