Is Power Devolution the Solution to Africa’s Conflicts?

[rujumba]

One of the most enduring stumbling blocks to the conclusion of peace agreements in Africa is the attempt to cultivate a consensus on the future shape of a war-torn country’s political system. Usually at the heart of these negotiation stalemates is bitter disagreement over the centralizing tendency of the state. Those in power usually want the centre to maintain a tight grip over resource allocation. These ruling groups usually argue that power decentralization schemes fuel conflict through the promotion of tribalism and regionalism. In other words, once people retreat to their respective regions under the ‘guise’ of decentralization or federalism, they start owing their political allegiance more to their regional governments and less to the central or federal governments. And in countries where there are weak institutional links between the centre and the periphery, the ruling groups argue that decentralizing tendencies could turn out to be a recipe for separatism or secessionism. Therefore, according to the ruling groups, states ought to maintain their tight links with the constituent regions in order to prevent countries from tearing apart. On the other hand, those in the opposition usually advocate for a devolution of power from the centre to the periphery. Those opposed to the ruling groups argue that in autocracies and fledgling democracies, there are underdeveloped institutional checks to prevent the ruling elite from misallocating national resources. Therefore, according to those in the opposition, regions should assume significant resource allocation powers to mitigate deliberate national resource misallocation.

Currently, Uganda is at a political crossroads. She is a unitary state that has attempted partial devolution of power from the centre to the periphery. Uganda has been experimenting with a decentralisation model where the central government cedes some of its resource allocation powers to the districts. Districts in Uganda are semi-autonomous in the sense that they manage social service delivery independent of the central government. However, although these administrative units engage in resource mobilisation through the imposition of taxes on businesses that operate within their administrative boundaries, the state maintains firm jurisdiction over all the commanding heights of the Ugandan economy. The movement from unitarism to decentralization, however, has done little to quell demands for fully fledged federalism. Leaders from some regions of the country argue that the state has performed poorly on the resource distribution circuit. Therefore, these leaders advocate for a further movement from decentralization to federalism. In their view, this system would allow each region to have an equitable share of the ‘national spoils’. And yet Uganda’s previous experimentation with a federalist model led to political conflict. When the British colonial era ended in 1962, Uganda experimented with a bizarre dual system where regions that wanted to federate federated and those that did not remained administrative units directly under the control of the Federal government. Under this arrangement, Buganda, the largest, richest and centrally located region in Uganda emerged as the most powerful federal state literally flexing muscles with the Federal government. An attempt by the Federal government to assert its authority led to a chain of events that saw the eventual violent termination of Uganda’s federalist arrangement and the adoption of a fully fledged unitarist model.

In light of the fact that there aren’t effective institutional checks to prevent ruling elites in Africa from misallocating national resources, should power devolution be adopted as a solution to Africa’s political conflicts?