After reading the book, I wanted to write about “life under the rubble”. However, I decided not to do so for various reasons.
I feel the time has come to jog my memory and share my thoughts. I will do so by linking the book's analysis, content, and implications to the current unfolding multiple crises, which are hard-hitting economies of SSA.
“From Under the Rubble” was edited by , the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature winner. It was published in 1969 in Russian and translated into English in 1973.
It consists of serious essays contributed by renowned Russian academics, scientists and thinkers of the time who were in exile.
These include the editor, who also spent years under enforced exile for his open criticism and opposing views about socialism in the Soviet Union.
The book's central thesis (and the essays) is that “the problem of the modern world, Soviet as well as the Western, can no longer be solved on the political plane. Instead, the quest for solutions must begin on the ethical level or moral and social values”.
Discussing ethics, moral and social values in a socialist system is a heresy and tantamount to becoming the arch enemy of the system itself, which can be considered anti-revolutionary, leading to punishment without impunity.
The book does not explain why it was titled From Under the Rubble.
However, from the foreword by Solzhenitsyn himself and subsequent essays, it can be deduced that their contribution builds on two preceding papers that made an indelible impact on Russian politics and philosophical thinking:
“Landmark” and “De Profondis” were written by prominent Russian thinkers and published in 1909 and 1918, respectively.
Both collections of essays rejected the ethos of the Russian Revolution, which was in the making in the early 1900s and occurred in October 1917. The authorities banned the books.
The authors of “From Under the Rubble” were hugely influenced by the two preceding collections of essays buried from the public and intellectual sights.
As articulated in the foreword, their thoughts and determination imply that the authors chose to “speak about people from beneath stone blocks and masses of debris that have buried them alive”.
Like most Russian literary and philosophical giants of the time, including Ayn Rand, there was a tendency to describe Soviet Russia, particularly during the revolution, as the “macabre of the living” and, hence, the title From Under the Rubble.
In their respective essays, the authors provided evidence-based and objective assessments of socialism, predicted its eventual demise, and suggested alternative solutions to escape the time's political, social, cultural, moral, and economic dilemmas.
They voiced concerns about coercive and authoritarian systems in their country against the professed collective decision-making under socialism.
They called for respect for individual and societal freedoms, including freedoms of expression, moral-based governance, and societal control of mass media, instead of by the Government and the communist party.
The authors argued that “the most important part of our freedom, inner freedom, is always subject to our will, and if we surrender it to corruption, we do not deserve to be called human”.
They said, “Our essential task is not to seek political liberation but to liberate our souls from participation in the lies forced upon us. Undoing this requires no physical, revolutionary, social, or organisational measures, meetings, strikes, or trade unions. Rather, it requires from everyone a moral step within their power- no more than that”.
In short, the contributors to the book underlined the importance of “social justice for all and the renunciation of violence as a means of solving social problems”.
In their view, if “social injustice prevails”, then chaos and fragmentation become the norm, including the “urge to dismember states into national atoms. For them, social injustice is against the widely held view that people of different backgrounds can coexist and, in cooperation, can give birth to a culture of a higher quality than any of them in isolation”.
When reading the book a long time ago, I was struck by these simple but profound statements, which to me appeared sensible principles that should guide those entrusted with the power of governing countries.
However, in the Soviet Union, these ideas were brushed aside until Gorbachev’s perestroika of the 1980s. Unfortunately, the assessments, arguments and suggested remedies were viewed by previous political leaders, especially Joseph Stalin, as anti-communism, pro-West (capitalism), treasonous and disgraceful to the nation.
The authors were often labelled as traitors, unpatriotic and agents of the CIA. However, these allegations could not prevent the Soviet Union from collapsing and, eventually, embracing what the authors had predicted three decades earlier.
What is the moral of the story for SSA?
It is not naïve to assume that questions of nation-nationalities, ethnolinguistic, and religious identities that have plagued SSA for years have some roots or genesis in the thoughts or political philosophies of the then-communist countries.
Nor is it wrong to assume that identity questions in Africa have intensified after the collapse of communism and the end of the “Cold War”. Of course, this does not mean internal factors have any lesser significance.
In short, even though the context is different, and the time and prevailing conditions of Soviet Russia starkly vary from the current African conditions, vital lessons can be drawn from the present multiple predicaments of SSA.
The essential tasks are that SSA needs a system that ensures social equality and equity with distributive justice; fosters social (national) capital through collaboration and cooperation and by bridging ethnolinguistic or religious divisions; renounce violence as a means of solving socioeconomic, environmental and political problems; and build confidence and mutual trust between the governing elites (regimes) and the public at large and, more importantly, between and among the various ethnolinguistic and religious groups.
Why are the lessons important for SSAs?
SSA’s socioeconomic progress remains inadequate, with recurring political instabilities.
Consequently, the sub-region lags behind the rest of the developing world by all socioeconomic standards despite its endowments of vast natural resources.
This is due to internal and external adverse factors, including cascading crises that hold back its socioeconomic progress.
In a situation where poverty is widespread, opportunities are squandered and mediocre development gains are unequally distributed, marginalisation or exclusion on the grounds of ethnolinguistic or religious identities become “weapons of mass destruction”.
In this article, marginalisation (perceived or actual) is broadly used to denote the exclusion of one or several ethnic groups or tribes in political and economic decision-making processes and access and allocation to productive resources.
Sadly, coup d’états, armed (civil) conflicts, and open wars have become the norm again in SSA.
Major news outlets and political discourses capture episodes of upheaval and turmoil in the sub-region, reminiscent of the 1960s, the 70s and the 80s.
Key among those recent instabilities are coup d’états in several countries of West Africa; an all-out war in Sudan, protracted conflicts in Ethiopia, DRC, and Somalia; and “no-peace, no-war” situation in South Sudan; insurgency in Mozambique, and religious tensions in several countries of the sub-region including Nigeria- Africa’s biggest economy and largest population.
Excluding South Africa, Mauritius, Seychelles, and Cape Verde, only five of the 45 countries of SSA (10 %) can be described as having “stable political systems”, and only about 5 (10 %) are heading to similar systems of stable governance, with some level of uncertainty.
Regarding population, only about 30 per cent of SSA’s population live in countries with regular and non-violent political systems.
In contrast, more than 70 per cent reside in violent, conflict-ravaged systems and countries in conflict situations.
Some countries suffer from autocratic regimes with leaders that hold absolute power, making state formation and nation-building by consensus nearly impossible, further eroding mutual trust between state institutions and the wider public and broader community of nations.
Such disturbing situations build on and compound age-old problems of governance, such as inter-ethnic violence and unresolved inter-state or regional conflicts, all of which are antithetical to socioeconomic development.
These instabilities occur when the sub-region struggles to recover from the onslaughts of multiple global crises such as COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, external indebtedness, depressed international demand for commodity exports, and impacts of climate change.
Despite these adverse socioeconomic conditions, African political elites have undertaken worthwhile steps to accelerate regional integration through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to boost intra-regional trade and harness comparative advantages or opportunities.
However, there are growing concerns that the endless political, social, environmental, and economic crises in SSA, which are all artificial, may setback the modest socioeconomic gains of the preceding decades and undercut potential profits from AfCFTA.
This suggests that recurring and protracted conflicts of SSA require a deeper understanding of the root causes and consequences and seeking collective remedies.
In this regard, this short article is intended to provide an independent viewpoint on the subject. It argues that societal or ethnic marginalisation is the least understood or the most ignored “causative factor” behind conflicts and political instabilities in SSA.
Whereas various authoritative studies in the field claim that ethnically diverse societies tend to be characterised by a higher incidence of conflicts, weak institutions, and lower economic growth, I strongly argue that the problem is not diversity per se.
Instead, the marginalisation, neglect or feelings of exclusion lead to protracted conflicts, making governance, state formation and nation-building impossible.
In other words, with the right approach, including respect for social justice, ethnic diversity can be an asset rather than a source of conflict or instability.
Thus, the marginalisation and exclusion of one ethnic group in economic and political decision-making in SSA merit open debates, analysis, and investigation to seek comprehensive solutions to the unfolding crises.
This brief article posits that peace and political stability are essential prerequisites for SSA to harness diversity dividends and fully foster state formation and nation-building.
Hence, in deliberative, executive, and legislative bodies, addressing marginalisation and exclusion through inclusive, transparent, and accountable political and economic decision-making should be given the rightful place and space. To that end, the article provides further reflection and recommendations on the way forward.
Sub-Saharan Africa is a sub-region that has long been characterised by multiple dependency syndrome. Domestically, SSA is overwhelmingly dependent on extracting natural resources for exports, employment, and output.
In most countries, primitive farming methods, rain-fed agriculture or unprocessed mineral resources account for the bulk of jobs, exports and GDP.
In a few countries, the informal, low-skill and low-technology services sector has accounted for a large share of GDP and employment, accentuating SSA’s pre-mature deindustrialization.
Internationally, the sub-region is the most dependent on development aid, including technical, humanitarian, or food aid. The sub-region has also been a battleground where international rivalry for natural resources and geopolitical dominance are fought and won.
Sadly, SSA also remains the locus of multiple deprivation and generalised poverty with systemic and structural vulnerability to adverse internal and external shocks such as perennial financial and economic crises, communicable and non-communicable diseases, vector-borne calamities, as well as pernicious conflicts.
Despite all these, the sub-region still holds significant potential in natural capital (or natural resources endowments), which, if carefully harnessed, can serve as a “mega-growth pole” and a source of recovery and socioeconomic transformation.
This piece is not intended to discuss well-known development challenges, opportunities, and prospects of SSA. Instead, it is intended to highlight one of the most greedy and yet completely ignored or the least-acknowledged problems in holding back or reversing the socioeconomic progress of SSA: marginalisation.
I strongly argue that marginalisation is the principal cause of ethnic fractionalisation and polarisation, leading to ethnic tensions, conflicts, and wastage of factors of production, including labour. Thus, marginalisation- or perceived- can be a ticking timebomb that must be addressed urgently.
Why is “marginalisation” a fundamental problem?
As alluded to above, marginalisation refers to:
- The process of cementing ethnic identity-based political systems at the expense of inclusive political narratives
- Open or disguised ethnolinguistic or tribes-based denial of access to productive resources such as land, farm inputs, fertilisers, machinery and quality seeds or capital.
- The dominance of one or more ethnic groups or tribes in economic sectors and employment opportunities
- Biased access to vital public services and institutions such as education, health, banking (financial services)
- Prioritising infrastructure, including ICTs, electricity, and vast-developmental options for own ethnolinguistic, religious and political bases
- Designing public administration, rules and regulations to serve the interest of the ruling ethnic group (s)
- Instilling ethnic-based societal, linguistic, cultural and historical bias and skewed allocation of scarce resources.
These problems are as rampant today as they were during colonial and post-colonial SSA and remain the sources of corruption, interethnic conflicts, civil wars, coup d’états and overall political instabilities with devastating impacts on socioeconomic performances and progress of SSA.
Ironically, these problems remain unaddressed, unacknowledged, or wholly ignored in Africa’s socioeconomic and political discourses. However, a few academic or research-based writings point to the issues and possible solutions.
Political and educated elites of the sub-region were blamed for jostling more for a mark of influence and self-aggrandisement than collectively seeking practical solutions to complex socioeconomic challenges and problems.
The other paradox that requires careful decoding or deciphering relates to the political history of countries in SSA.
They stood in unison and gallantly fought for their independence- to extricate themselves from the yoke of slavery, colonialism, and exploitation of their resources.
This begs the question:
- Why is SSA now plagued by ethnolinguistic or religious fractionalisation, polarization, and conflicts?
- Why don’t we draw lessons from our history and unite our efforts, visions, available knowledge, and resources to overcome underdevelopment, generalised poverty, marginalisation and multiple deprivation facing our peoples and societies?
- Why don’t we collectively build our socioeconomic resilience to stave off the impacts of climate change, environmental degradation, and killer diseases?
- How long should we continue lamenting about the past and the era of divide and rule as the leading cause of our interethnic, linguistic, or religious divisions?
I believe socioeconomic underdevelopment, poverty, disease, and global warming (climate change) know no national boundaries or ethnolinguistic or religious identities.
These common challenges and problems do not spare “some of us” but devastate the “sum of us”, irrespective of any identity badge.
Paradoxically, why are countries such as Ethiopia, which boast centuries of independence and fought colonialism and apartheid systems, side by side with fellow countries of SSA, having difficulty being at peace with themselves?
More than poverty and underdevelopment, Ethiopia’s internal conflicts have become vicious, protracted, widespread, costly, and devastating.
They have shifted from economic or class-based in the 1970s towards increasingly ethnolinguistic, mainly since the country has opted for an ethnolinguistic identity-based political system since 1991.
These profound questions and issues require collective reflection, understanding and response. However, surprisingly, SSA’s political elites are wealthy ethnic entrepreneurs.
Also, the intellectuals behind ethnic identity-based political narratives have shamelessly extolled ethnicity to exploit the sub-region’s potential, opportunities, and virtues, often favouring one ethnic or religious group.
Beyond exploitation, nepotism and corruption under ethnic-based political architecture, there is outright rejection or denial of the devastating impacts of such a framework. Moreover, there is a total reluctance to address the root causes of conflicts and instabilities.
Instead of seeking solutions, SSA’s political elites and ideologues with vested interests are busily prophesizing, mesmerising and stupefying poverty and marginalisation as requiring “divine interventions” and the application of the “law of positive attraction”.
Such rejection and blind denials mask our political viewpoints and narrow our technical knowledge, undermining our capacities to collectively seek solutions to problems, which are the causes and consequences of our underdevelopment.
What is more disturbing is that ethnolinguistic or religious identity-based political narratives have become the shortest route to political power and self-enrichment of individuals.
Such reports have become fertile grounds for the emergence of ethnic entrepreneurs and rent-seeking behaviours of ethnocratic regimes and political elites.
Undoubtedly, they have also become causative factors of ethnic fractionalisation, polarisation, interethnic tensions, and devastating conflicts.
Marginalisation in economic and political policy-making and the feeling of exclusion (real or perceived) hinder the fostering of positive and synergetic state-population relations. It also widens credibility gaps and heightens mutual mistrust.
Moreover, it makes political consensus, state formation and nation-building starkly impossible.
Avalanches of authoritative studies demonstrate that broken state-people relations can easily lead to armed conflicts or civil wars when ignored, left unattended or unaddressed.
The World Bank, in one of its earlier studies, provided evidence-based analyses, arguing that “ethnic cleavage can affect development outcomes, influence the internal organisation of governments, and the allocation of public spending which in turn lead to unequal distribution of public goods and services, heightened rent-seeking behaviours and reduced efficiency of public spending”.
Such circumstances can easily lead marginalised groups to complete dissatisfaction and rebellion and eventually to conflicts and civil unrest if not quickly remedied.
Trade-offs, values, and policy options
Modern and progressive politics results from trade-offs, dialogue, compromise, and value exchanges between political elites and societies (the electorate).
While political elites under a unified national political agenda get the support of the majority (in free, civilised, and democratic institutions), they also give back to societies' collective security, justice, economic well-being, equal opportunity and access to education, health, and soft and complex infrastructure.
This confirms that relations between inclusive political regimes and the public are not “zero-sum games” where one gains at the expense of others. Instead, it is a “non-zero-sum game” or “win-win” for all.
Contrary to national identity-based political narratives, political systems centred on ethnolinguistic or religious identity-based political architectures directly and indirectly feed on or survive on ethnolinguistically or religiously biased allegiance, dominance, and “extractive entrepreneurship”.
Prejudice and discrimination based on ethnolinguistic and religious identities also reinforce persistent inequalities. They can lead to heightened systemic risks, structural vulnerabilities, multiple deprivations, and devastating conflicts.
This is to say that the trade-off in ethnic identity-based political systems or regimes is built on “zero-sum- games”.
Evidence shows that “developmental states” envisioned the mobilisation and recalibration of all productive resources, including labour and capital, for inclusive growth, transformation, and development are those opting for non-zero-sum or win-win trade-offs.
To make this sustainable, such states put consultative, inclusive, transparent, accountable and non-partisan public administration and governance structures in place.
The worst consequence of ethnolinguistic and religious fragmentation and fractionalisation is the erosion of societal values built over centuries. This can be deduced from postings on social media by Ethiopians of different or competing ethnic backgrounds.
The postings often include vengeance, hateful scribbles, and horrifying pictures of indiscriminate, ethnically motivated killings of children, women and older people.
For many of us, this behaviour is shocking because one would not have expected such inhuman conduct before introducing the ethnic identity-based political system in Ethiopia.
In the Rwanda Genocide of 1994, which is still fresh in the minds of those born before the mid-1980s, local media fueled mass killings and the Genocide.
The international community and their mass media completely ignored or remained oblivious to what was in the making.
The current social media, which runs on emotions rather than reasoning, on hate than love or mutual respect, can be a destructive force. On top of this, social media is without appropriate censure, self-censure, and accountability. It may fuel further interethnic divisions, conflicts, and structural or systemic animus without collective societal norms and values.
Likewise, ethnolinguistics-based or religiously affiliated media outlets such as those widely and openly operating in some countries, often with the direct support of ethnic-based political parties, ethnic entrepreneurs or ethnically formed regional states, may inflict more harm than good on social capital formation, inter-ethnic and cross-cultural communications.
Furthermore, ethnic-based institutions and service providers may create an unbridgeable rift between and among the various ethnolinguistic and religious groups.
They may intensify and aggravate fragmentation instead of correcting erroneous historical perceptions and narrowing divisions between them.
Likewise, political elites invariably design public institutions in ethnolinguistic and religiously diverse countries that adopt identity-based political systems.
They also tend to define institutional portfolios and allocation of public resources to fit their ethnolinguistic political agenda.
This means that policy advisors, experts and technocrats are chosen based on their ethnic identities, ignoring meritocracy, expertise, experience, and professional backgrounds. Consequently, the legitimacy and accountability of functionaries in such systems exclusively focus on narrow ethnolinguistic or religious interests instead of protecting and promoting collective national interests.
In Soviet Russia, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his fellow authors argued, the cadres and political decision-makers overtook the role of scientists and experts in every field.
They tend to lecture professionals and respected scientists in various fields. Agronomists, economists, engineers, nuclear or space scientists, etc., all are subjected to lectures by political cadres, often on issues that are beyond their comprehension.
Moreover, the political cadres and leadership do not entertain words such as challenges, problems or failures in the policy and intellectual discourses.
Failure is success; lagging is collective progress; deprivation is communal prosperity; hunger, malnutrition and diseases are socialist health, etc.
Negative but factual words or phrases are considered irritating to the ears of the political elites of the time.
For instance, while programmes and projects have no financial and technical resources to implement, the final assessments and reports are permanently crowned with flowery phrases such as “resounding success”, “great achievements”, or “excelling success stories”, etc. Such systems often build positive images despite glaring fallibility, systemic decay, and malfunctioning.
Even SSA’s religious establishments are not spared from inter-ethnic divisions, disagreements, and tensions.
As we have seen from the recent tensions within the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church, the terrible divisions within the oldest church in Africa show no limit to ethnicity and ethnic-identity-based governance system.
This indicates that narratives that began as ethnic can quickly descend to religious or linguistic fractionalisation, polarization, and conflicts. What we observed in EOTC also demonstrates the erosion of long-established common societal values, such as believing in One God.
In Rwanda’s 1994 Genocide, post-genocide evidence indicates that the Catholic Church encouraged or silently witnessed the actions of its members, massacring Tutsis, including those sheltered in the Church itself. Boko Haram (Jama ‘at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wa’ l-Jihad) poses unprecedented challenges in Nigeria and neighbouring countries.
Religious institutions are usually known for nurturing and building value-based systems. Teachings that we learned from biblical studies, such as that “God Created Human beings in His Image”, have been conveniently interpreted, misinterpreted, and replaced by “some are more in the image of God than others”.
In all these and amid the growing animosity between societies (often along ethnolinguistic or religious lines), what is more worrying is the “appalling silence of many reasonable and seasoned people” just to draw a leaf from the historic speech of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr during Americas’ civil rights movement. Deafening silence on episodes of coup d’états in West Africa shows a zero-sum game with an apparent general feeling of “West Africa’s problems are not the problem of Africa or the rest of the world”.
In Sudan, the inability of African countries, regional entities, and the wider international community to bring warring factions to negotiate a peaceful settlement reflects the utter failures of the existing regional and global governance architectures.
In Ethiopia, there was intense mobilisation and overwhelming support to the wars in Tigray, Afar and Amhara regions (and now in Amhara region) along ethnic lines. The regional bodies and international community were silent to avoid the tragic conflicts.
The confluences of national mobilisation for the war efforts based on ethnic identities and the international community's silence have questioned the legitimacy of the domestic political agenda and the trust in national, regional and global institutions to resolve grievances, political crises and conflicts.
Resetting moral, cultural, and value-based systems, revamping moral teachings, and re-examining mindsets to seek lasting solutions for SSA’s development predicaments have become more persuasive today than ever.
Many governments in SSA still believe that advocating for social justice, societal values, fairness, equality, and ethical values is equivalent to anti-state behaviour and aversion to the ethnic and ethnolinguistic-based political systems currently prevalent in the SSA region.
In this respect, nothing much has changed since Solzhenitsyn and his co-authors voiced this predicament over five decades ago.
Win-win trade-offs and respect for social and ethical values can only function in systems with vibrant institutions, legal means and instruments that serve all citizens equally (without discrimination).
Institutions and legal tools work well when complemented by moral obligations engrained in societal value systems.
I constantly fear that ethnicity in SSA is destroying the unity of purpose and society’s moral-based value systems with disastrous consequences for our collective progress and survival. Shared history and destiny should have been the raison d’être of SSA’s clubs.
Ethnic divisions should not have taken away standard value systems, heroism, and knowledge systems or technical. Therefore, SSA’s elites must facilitate the way towards unity in diversity.
It is imperative not to let ethnic identity-based politics emerge as a new “divide and rule” tool in the face of the sub-region's socioeconomic malaise and suffering, undercutting capacities to invest, innovate, grow, and develop as free nations.
Fostering diversity dividends
Like business, trade and economic development, ethnic diversity can be a powerful tool, if properly harnessed, to address our collective underdevelopment and backwardness.
Diversity dividend is a synergetic gain for all, which can only be achieved by harnessing the calibre and talents of everyone in a society to maximise societal profits without labels of ethnicity, language, caste, or religion.
Building public institutions for inclusive governance and prosperity is vital to harness diverse assets, resources, and multiple identities to maximise development outcomes and social welfare while minimising the risks of marginalisation, uncertainty, and conflicts.
Bridging ethnolinguistic and religious gaps in multiethnic nations is critical for socio-economic development and forming social or national capital instead of ethnic capital.
As we learn from the extensive essays in “From the Rubble”, there was a tendency to denigrate social justice moral or ethical values as “Western ploy” to undermine socialism and communism, which are the desirable ethos of Soviet Russia.
There was rampant denialism of the importance of these values and societal norms to foster solidarity among the various peoples and regions of the Soviet Union.
SSA, which has been consistently lamenting its continued marginalisation in global trade, investment, and output, and the global governance systems, cannot afford to entertain marginalisation based on ethnolinguistic and religious grounds.
As much as the sub-region demands progressive and beneficial integration into the global economy, it must ensure inclusive political narratives and system of governance by developing a “diversity framework or architecture”.
Before demanding equality, equity and distributive justice from the global economy and governance architecture, SSA countries should strive to grant these to their population under inclusive political narratives and development agendas.
They should stop demanding equality and social justice from the global north while denying the same social values to a large portion of their population. A domestically unified political and development agenda is critical for SSA’s regional and global integration.
Therefore, fostering inclusive politics and maximising diversity dividends must be part of SSA's development policies and strategies. This is because that development does not know ethnolinguistic and religious identities. Nor do global warming and environmental disasters.
These are collective challenges nationally, regionally, and globally that can only be addressed and resolved collectively.
Therefore, SSA’s economic viability and relevance require a change from the current dominant paradigm of zero-sum-game towards a win-win paradigm, which fosters and maximises diversity dividend.
One should pay tribute to white South Africans who participated in anti-apartheid demonstrations and joined the struggle for free and equal South Africa.
The global movement of “Black Lives Matter” drew colourless congregations and protests worldwide, and the mass anger and demonstrations in France in the wake of the killings of a French national of Arab origin by the country’s policeman deserve recognition.
All these positive occurrences and movements reaffirm that solidarity and unity in diversity are the only cures to our myriads of socioeconomic, environmental, and political problems.
As much as multiracial societies endeavour to foster a solidarity dividend, SSA must strive to address ethnic divisions, marginalisation, and interethnic conflict by enabling a diversity dividend to the benefit of “the sum of us” instead of “some of us”.
Conclusions and the way forward
The key messages from this piece are that:
(a) socioeconomic underdevelopment, backwardness, and inability to meet basic needs, as well as the need to break multiple dependency syndromes (traps) of SSA, require unifying political narratives;
(b) SSA should multiply and enhance collective actions and efforts centred on ethnolinguistic and religious plurality, harmony and equality to reverse its marginalization in global trade, investment, output and decision-making processes;
(c) political leadership and educated elites of SSA have primary responsibilities to reeducate the public to reset moral values and mindsets towards collective development and social (national) capital formation, away from ethnic capital formation;
(d) foster cross-ethnic communication to harness diversity’s dividend by ensuring equal access to productive resources, quality education, health infrastructure, including electricity, and ICTs;
(e) ethnic identity-based narratives should not take away standard value systems and undermine unity in diversity, shared history and common destiny and
(f) SSA’s development policies must factor ways and means of ensuring inclusive growth by fostering public institutions that remove distortions and differentiation (discrimination) based on ethnicity, language or creed. Conversely, erroneous political narratives should not divert the attention of policymakers and the public away from addressing collective challenges and multiple deprivations rampant in SSA.
Building on these key messages and with the view to harnessing diversity dividend, the following concrete steps and measures are necessary:
First, there should be an acknowledgement or recognition that ethnic identity-based politics lead to the marginalisation and exclusion of others in vital decision-making processes.
There should also be a broader consensus that marginalisation leads to inequality, policy distortions, grievances and cycles of protracted conflicts, among the most significant barriers to socioeconomic revival, growth, transformation, and development. Ignoring or denying the devastating impacts of marginalisation for long may lead to terrible consequences for societies at large, including those perceived to be exclusively benefiting from ethnic identity-based political narratives and systems.
Second, there should be well-informed, conscious, transparent, and accountable processes to foster solidarity and collective commitments of citizens and institutionalised mechanisms to address inter-ethnic tensions and grievances permanently.
This is fundamental because the consequences of identity-based politics are too complex, dangerous, and colossal for the public institutions alone to manage them effectively. Although governments have primary responsibilities, addressing ethnic fragmentation, polarisation and consequential devastating conflicts requires actions from all stakeholders at all levels (national, sub-regional, regional and global).
Third, decisively break the link between political leadership (and state machinery) and ethnic entrepreneurship.
This is because such an undesirable bondage can pose enormous challenges for building consensus and forging public alliances against ethnic divisions and ethnic-based political narratives.
Ethnic entrepreneurs and profiteering “prophets” are culprits of the unbalanced distribution of resources and unfettered access to productive resources. These happen often at the expense of their own ethnolinguistic and religious groups or other competing ethnic groups, gradually building mistrust between states and the public.
Studies and empirical evidence prove that ethnic entrepreneurs are behind further ethnic fractionalisation.
They use all available channels, including formal & informal organisations, religious associations, village elders and self-help grassroots as primary vehicles of self-enrichment. They can be dangerously powerful to the political establishments to manage or control them.
They can also be costly to societies in economic, political, and social terms as they wield enormous powers that may lead to a feeling of marginalisation by those who are not benefiting as much or at all.
They even go as far as deliberately damaging the reputation of the political machinery to create fear and a sense of “divide and rule” among the public.
Fourth, there must be deliberate policies and clear rules and regulations to guarantee equal access of citizens to productive resources, education, health, infrastructure, institutionalised incentives, and capital.
Not only publicly funded projects and institutions but also private projects and programmes financed through public-private partnerships (PPPs) should provide public goods without discrimination based on ethnolinguistic or religious labels.
Fifth, political and public discourses, educational systems (including higher institutions of learning), research and development (R&D) institutions, and formal and informal organisations must espouse civic duties.
This paves the way for fostering cross-ethnic communication, mutual coexistence, and social cohesion. Zero-sum-game approaches centred on self-enrichment and “exclusionary preferences” will not be long-term sustainable.
Governments of SSA must seek ways and means of addressing social injustice, inequality, and inequity.
They also need to develop legal and institutional mechanisms to effectively deal with ethnic-based diatribes, incitation and hatemongering, particularly by political leaders, officials including army and security personnel, ideologues, exclusionist elites, including academic or policy advisors, and, more importantly, ethnic entrepreneurs.
Sixth, governments of SSA should play a leading role and assume primary responsibilities to create enabling conditions to foster interethnic communication, cultural exchanges and social (national) capital.
They should devise policies and strategies to fight social fragmentation, marginalisation, and exclusion. This should be done to reduce risks and uncertainties facing citizens at large without ethnolinguistic or religious differentiation. They must also foster public institutions and administration by favouring meritocracy, expertise, and competence in delivering public goods and services, eliminating ethnic-based and quota-driven career systems.
They should not let their primordial policymaking functions and institutional authorities be overtaken or undermined by profiteering hypnotises who use extreme poverty to extort and extract scarce public resources.
This is key in rebuilding vibrant and capable state institutions and regaining public confidence and trust in political governance. Fostering public trust and confidence in political leadership is critically important to managing economic resources and facilitates social cohesion and coexistence among the various social, religious, linguistic or ethnic groups.
Finally (seventh), SSA urgently needs to harness the potential of its intellectuals, academics, researchers, and scientific and technical communities (at home and in diaspora).
These can provide knowledge, expertise, and experience for policymaking to achieve inclusive development. The sub-region's citizens work in reputed global innovation labs, cutting-edge technological centres such as Silicon Valley, prestigious universities, and world-class research international institutions.
If systematically harnessed, these vital competencies and resources can improve SA's socio-economic and political dynamics. Ignoring or undermining such untapped capital for a long time can be fatalistic or detrimental to the overall progress of the sub-region.
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Stable political systems, for the convenience of this piece, are systems where citizens at large, investors, tourists, and political rivals (opponents) go on their daily lives or businesses without fear of reprisal, conflicts, sudden or systemic violence, subjugation, feeling of marginalization, nepotism, corruption or social exclusion by political machinery, institutions, or state apparatus. These should be viewed or understood as different from democratic systems of governance.
Ethnic entrepreneurs in this article are used to denote individuals or groups who extract economic benefits and political cleavage due to their ethnic identity, enjoying exclusive and unfettered access to productive assets, such as land and capita, leading to “ethnic capital formation”, marginalization of others and the maintenance of biased political system at all costs.
Quotations are from Heather McGhee’s fascinating book titled, “THE SUM OF US: What Racism costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together”, which I strongly recommend to every able politician and educated elite to read.
*Mussie Delelegn Arega (PhD) is the Acting Head of the Productive Capacities and Sustainable Development Branch in the Division for Africa, LDCs and Special Programs at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the views of UNCTAD or the United Nations. The author can be reached at (mussie.delelegn@unctad.org).
