Policy papers

Policy papers
PP71: En Côte d’Ivoire, la situation politique mine le niveau sécuritaire
« Le bien-être des citoyens dépend du fait qu’ils bénéficient d’une sécurité personnelle, qui leur garantit ainsi qu’à leurs propriétés d’être exempts de violence et de vol », d’après le Legatum Institute (2019). « Un environnement sûr et stable est nécessaire pour attirer les investissements et soutenir la croissance économique. En bref, une nation ne peut prospérer que dans un environnement de sécurité et de sûreté pour ses citoyens ».
PP70: Willing to kill: Factors contributing to mob justice in Uganda
Mob justice is a form of extrajudicial punishment or retribution in which a person suspected of wrongdoing is typically humiliated, beaten, and in many cases killed by vigilantes or a crowd. Mob action takes place in the absence of any form of fair trial in which the accused are given a chance to defend themselves; the mob simply takes the law into its own hands (Ng’walali & Kitinya, 2006). Mob justice is not only criminal but also amounts to a violation of human rights (Uganda Human Rights Commission, 2016).
PP69: Election présidentielle 2020 en Côte d’Ivoire: Quels ingrédients pour la participation inclusive?
L’approche des élections présidentielles du 31 octobre 2020 en Côte d’Ivoire rime avec des tensions dans le paysage politique ivoirien. Depuis plusieurs mois, les partis politiques de l’opposition et les citoyens ordinaires manifestent publiquement leur contestation, en réaction à un potentiel troisième mandat du président sortant, ainsi que par rapport à la révision de la liste électorale qu’ils estiment opaque et non inclusive.
PP68: Corruption crossroads? Rising perceptions of graft weaken citizen trust, threaten Botswana’s democratic standing
PP67: COVID-19 in Africa - Vulnerabilities and assets for an effective response
Not only did the COVID-19 disease arrive on Africa’s shores (and at its airports) later than in Asia, Europe, and North America (Loembé et al., 2020), but for months the numbers of infections and deaths also appeared to remain relatively low. As of early August, the continent had experienced more than 1 million confirmed cases and 23,000 deaths (Africa CDC, 2020), though these figures were increasing rapidly.
PP66: Africa’s digital divide and the promise of e-learning
According to UNESCO (2020), approximately 1.2 billion students and youth worldwide are affected by school and university closures because of the COVID-19 pandemic. To adjust to these new circumstances, governments must develop innovative solutions to ensure inclusive learning opportunities during this period of unprecedented educational disruption.
PP65: Violent extremism in Africa: Popular assessments from the ‘Eastern Corridor’
Over the past two decades, the emergence and spread of local and transnational extremist organizations have become primary sources of insecurity in Africa. These include Al Shabaab, spreading from Somalia throughout East Africa; Boko Haram, from northern Nigeria into the greater Lake Chad region; Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, from Algeria to other states across the Sahel; and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), continuing to make inroads into the continent (Mets, 2019).
PP64: Démocratie en Côte d’Ivoire: Mythe ou réalité?
La démocratie est un mode de gouvernance par lequel le peuple décide de dessiner son avenir. Elle incarne ainsi l’expression de la reconnaissance de l’État de droit et des droits de l’homme. Depuis les années 1990, les états africains ont massivement adhéré à ce modèle de gouvernance, et l’Union Africaine (2007) continue d’inviter ses membres à le promouvoir sur le continent à travers la Charte Africaine de la Démocratie, des Elections, et de la Gouvernance.
PP63: Democratic dividend: The road to quality education in Africa
Education is a powerful tool to fight poverty, enable upward socioeconomic mobility, and empower people to live healthier lives. But while the global adult literacy rate continues to increase, from 81% in 2000 to 86% in 2018 (World Bank, 2019), the challenge of access to quality education remains particularly severe in Africa. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, globally one out of five children aged 6-17 years were not in school; more than half of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa.
PP62: Lived poverty on the rise: Decade of living-standard gains ends in Africa
Economic destitution – whether measured as the frequency with which people go without basic necessities or as the proportion of people who live on less than $1.90 a day – declined steadily in Africa between 2005 and 2015. However, the findings of Afrobarometer Round 7 surveys, conducted in 34 African countries between late 2016 and late 2018, demonstrate that improvements in living standards have come to a halt and “lived poverty” is once again on the rise.
PP61: Gains and gaps: Perceptions and experiences of gender in Africa
PP60: Change ahead: Experience and awareness of climate change in Africa
Climate change is “the defining development challenge of our time,” and Africa the continent most vulnerable to its consequences, according to the African Union (2015) and the United Nations (UN Environment, 2019). Farmers in Uganda waiting endlessly for rain (URN, 2019), cyclone survivors in Mozambique and Zimbabwe digging out of the mud and burying their dead (Associated Press, 2019) – these images bring home what changing climate and increasingly extreme weather conditions may mean for everyday Africans.
PP59: La création d’emplois: Un défi majeur au Bénin
Les questions relatives à l’emploi et plus précisément l’emploi des jeunes constituent une préoccupation particulière pour tous les états du monde, car le développement de leur nation de même que le bien-être des citoyens en dépendent. L’emploi étant l’un des moyens permettant de lutter contre la pauvreté (Hull, 2009), l’Organisation des Nations Unies, en lançant ses Objectifs de Développement Durable (ODD), a fait de l’accès à un emploi décent pour tous une de ses priorités (UNICEF, 2015).
PP58: Africans want open elections – especially if they bring change
Observers now commonly assert that multiparty elections are institutionalized as a standard feature of African politics (Posner & Young, 2007; Bratton, 2013; Cheeseman, 2018; Bleck & van de Walle, 2019). By this they mean that competitive electoral contests are the most commonplace procedure for choosing and changing political leaders across the continent.
PP57: Declining trust: Basotho perceptions of government corruption and performance drive drop in popular trust
In a democracy, citizens delegate powers to individuals and political parties charged with building and maintaining institutions that will ensure the people’s well-being. In this arrangement, trust is one of the most important ingredients in the legitimacy and sustainability of political systems (Blind, 2006).
PP56: How free is too free? Across Africa, media freedom is on the defensive
PP55: Are Africans’ freedoms slipping away?
Protection of individual rights and liberties has been on both the African continental agenda and the global agenda for decades, shaped especially by the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. But the reality on the ground is often a far cry from the high standards set forth in these documents.
PP54: Democracy in Africa: Demand, supply, and the ‘dissatisfied democrat’
PP53: L’égalité genre au Togo: Progrès et points sombres
Le Togo a modernisé ces dernières années plusieurs de ces textes de lois et pris plusieurs initiatives pour la promotion de l’égalité genre dans le pays.
PP52: Bounded autonomy: What limits Zimbabweans’ trust in their courts and electoral commission?
After the Constitutional Court upheld the election results of 30 July 2018, Zimbabwe’s leading opposition party ended its online public response with the following message to newly confirmed President Emmerson Mnangagwa: “You can rig the elections. You can capture ZEC [Zimbabwe Electoral Commission]. You can capture [the] judiciary. But you will never capture the people. Their will shall prevail. The people shall govern!” (Movement for Democratic Change, 2018).
PP51: Taking stock: Citizen priorities and assessments three years into the SDGs
Access to justice in Africa
Our global releases provide analysis across all surveyed countries on the most important and timely issues that Afrobarometer covers. Many are released during special release events in specific countries; all are distributed to stakeholders, the news media, and globally via our website.
PP50: La gouvernance, affecte-t-elle la volonté des Béninois à payer leurs taxes?
La mobilisation des ressources à travers la collecte des impôts et taxes est l’un des moyens pouvant permettre à une nation de renforcer sa capacité financière et améliorer la fourniture des biens et services publics pour le bien-être de la population. Cependant, les pays en voie de développement, qui ont un besoin énorme en termes de fourniture des biens et services publics, présentent une faible capacité à mobiliser les taxes (Besley & Persson, 2014).
PP49: Heal the beloved country: Zimbabwe’s polarized electorate
For a moment, Zimbabwe’s July 30, 2018, elections seemed to promise relief from a traumatic political past. An aging autocrat had been deposed and his successor intoned pledges of “a new dispensation.” A dormant opposition movement began to reawaken to opportunities for open political campaigning. At home and abroad, Zimbabwe’s well-wishers allowed themselves a cautious hope that change was finally afoot. But change was not to be.
Another disputed election
PP48: Demand for transparency, accountability drives call for electing local leaders in Ghana
Decentralization occurs when resources, power, and tasks are delegated to local-level governance structures that are democratic and largely independent of central government (Manor, 1999). Decentralization can thus be an important vehicle for ensuring that sustainable development policies and programs are implemented at the local level and bring socio-economic relief to the grass roots.
PP47: Public attitudes toward Zimbabwe’s 2018 elections: Downbeat yet hopeful?
Zimbabweans will go to the polls in presidential, parliamentary, and local government elections on July 30, 2018. These elections are the first test of the popular will since the dramatic military intervention of November 2017 that forced an end to the 37-year reign of Robert Mugabe.
PP46: Food, health, poverty, water: How Malian citizens prioritize problems and the Sustainable Development Goals
ONLY AVAILABLE IN FRENCH.
Le présent rapport traite des questions portant sur les plus importants problèmes auxquels le Mali fait face et auxquels le gouvernement devrait s'attaquer. Il traite successivement de ces problèmes tels que révélés par les citoyens dans l'enquête Afrobaromètre de 2017 au Mali, des domaines de développement que recouvrent ces problèmes, et enfin des Objectifs de Développement Durable (ODD) qui peuvent en être tirés, objectifs correspondant à ceux de Nations Unies à l'horizon 2030.
PP45: Local governance in Benin: A guarantee of sustainable development?
Faced with the disappointing performance of centralized systems, many African states opted for decentralization in the 1990s in a bid to ensure that their citizens receive quality services (Anago, 2009). In theory, decentralization involves withdrawing some powers from the central state and transferring them to elected bodies at the local level. This introduced the concept of local governance, whose practical implementation supposes that all actors understand the institutional framework within which they function as well as their roles, responsibilities, and room for maneuver.
PP44: Slowly growing or stunted? How delivery of electoral, political, and economic goods impacts support for democracy in Uganda
Parliament of Uganda. Photo by Nicolas Bamulanzeki, photo journalist at Observer weekly newspaper, nicholasbamulanzeki@gmail.com)