Thread by @tayooye

THREAD: Why democracy is the biggest impediment to economic development in Africa?

1./ Caveats:
1: I am NOT in favor of authoritarianism as a political system.
2: Democracy has some value, especially for relatively homogeneous countries with well-developed institutions.
3: I think Africa should look east (Singapore/China) for a devt-focused political system.

2./ Democracy supposedly puts options before RATIONAL CITIZENS who EVALUATE the platforms of the contenders before voting for the one with the platform that can help produce economic development and other positive outcomes.

3./ The key assumptions of democracy as a political system are the rationality of the citizens and their capacity to dispassionately evaluate and choose the best of many options.

4./ In a good democratic system, RATIONAL citizens would review:

1.The CVs of the political candidates to assess their record of achievements.
2.Their work experience to assess their leadership abilities, and
3.Their values and lifestyle to ascertain integrity and consistency.

The problem with this key democratic requirement is that a vast majority of our people do NOT possess the literacy level required to make the evaluation.

80% of my and probably your extended family cannot go through this intellectually rigorous process.

Sub-Saharan Africa has a literacy rate of about 60% (quite generous IMO) and most of the well-educated people don’t vote. So the uneducated 40% ends up choosing our leaders.

Our people typically outsource the supposedly rational decision-making process to extrinsic factors like tribe (Is he Zulu?), religion (is he a Christian?) charisma (is he fun?), accessibility (can I reach him for a favor?). None of these factors have anything to do with the job.

Nobody would choose the CEO of a company via a general election. It is stupid to expect that people who can’t be trusted to choose the CEO of a $1m company can be trusted to choose the CEO of a country with trillions of dollars in GDP.

POP quiz: please review the Wikipedia pages of these 3 gentlemen.

1. Moghalu - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsley_…

2. Buhari - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammadu…

3. Abubakar en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atiku_Abu…

Moghalu is obviously a fantastic candidate but he will win less than 1% in next month’s election.

Charisma will always beat competence in an African election. Zuma will always defeat Mbeki and @MoghaluKingsley -MA (Tufts), PhD (LSE), Exec Ed (HBS/Wharton)- and former UN official/Central Banker will never get a chance to lead.

That's the problem with democracy in Africa.

That's why democracy is the biggest impediment to economic development in Africa. It never picks the best leaders on our continent. We need to migrate to a meritocracy that gives political power to the best of us regardless of charisma, tribe, and religion.