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The Economist profiles Nigeria's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:

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“THE gele is my trademark,” says the Nigerian finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, describing the colourful head wrap she puts over her short, greying hair before she allows pictures to be taken. “I am very Nigerian from dress to everything.” Some of her critics disagree. During anti-reform protests in January, demonstrators focused their anger on the finance minister. They called her an unwelcome outsider because she spent long periods abroad. She was a managing director at the World Bank before coming home last year.

Sitting in her half-moon-shaped office overlooking Nigeria’s dusty capital, Abuja, Ms Okonjo-Iweala faces an unenviable task. President Goodluck Jonathan has given her just three years to overhaul sub-Saharan Africa’s second-biggest economy, one riven with corruption and inefficiencies, carved up by political bosses and vulnerable to bursts of communal violence.

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Opalo highlights an Economist article:

Yet Rwanda has one huge advantage: the rule of law. No African country has done more to curb corruption. Ministers have been jailed for it. Transparency International, a watchdog, reckons Rwanda is less graft-ridden than Greece or Italy (though companies owned by the ruling party play an outsized role in the economy). “I have never paid a bribe and I don’t know anyone who has had to pay a bribe,” says Josh Ruxin, one of the owners of Heaven, a restaurant in Kigali, the capital.

The country is blessedly free of red tape, too. It ranks 45th in the World Bank’s index of the ease of doing business, above any African nation bar South Africa and Mauritius. Registering a firm takes three days and is dirt cheap. Property rights are strengthening, as well—the government is giving peasants formal title to their land.

Thandika Mkandawire writes:

Image courtesy of LSE

...one has to consider the cases of many African countries where these institutions were severely compromised during one-party rule.

Such countries have had huge political problems with their democratisation since they have no credible institutions to adjudicate even the simplest of squabbles. In Malawi all political actors have respected the courts and sought to redress their grievances through the court system. Malawi had more litigations going on than the entire SADC region. One can point to some of the abusive aspects of these litigations but all in all they are partly evidence of the faith in our court system.

When Bingu came to power he promised to reverse the creeping trend towards the politicisation of these institutions. He specifically promised to strengthen the meritocratic basis of the civil service. What we are witnessing now is the shredding of the legitimacy of these institutions by politicising them and by implying that their daily management of their affairs depend on “orders from above”. The institutions are now being pitted one against another.

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via Jimmy Kainja

Nicolas Van De Walle reviews Peter Eichstaedt & Theodore Trefon's 'Congo Masquerade':

Trefon takes a broader view of the DRC, examining the country’s sociopolitical dynamics and its failing institutions. His book has no heroes. It is sharply critical of the DRC’s rapacious political class. But Trefon is perhaps even more critical of the aid efforts of the United Nations, various bilateral and multilateral donors, and international nongovernmental organizations, all of whom he suggests might actually be making things worse, by perverting institutional incentives for reform. The Congolese state, meanwhile, remains essentially collapsed, unable to provide social services or ensure law and order. The uncoordinated proliferation of donor projects weakens the state apparatus by hiring away the few available competent Congolese administrators and by providing various perks and resources to a class of local middlemen who now live off foreign aid.

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Charles Onyango-Obbo writing in Naked Chiefs:

The Big Man in Burundi is a former rebel leader, Pierre Nkurunziza. He is another contradictory figure. An election cheat and tormentor of his opponents, Nkurunziza has managed to bring a modicum of stability to Burundi. In a move you can’t begrudge him, he shamed many bigger, richer, and stable African countries when he sent troops from his poor nation to the African Union’s Peacekeeping Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), at a time when only Uganda had the stomach (or was mad enough) to do so.

As the US diplomatic cables leaked to the whistleblower website Wikileaks revealed, Nkurunziza calculated that plunging into Somalia fray would give his little ignored country huge diplomatic oomph. He has reaped benefits beyond his wildest dreams. Nkurunziza is a complex bloke. He is obsessed with the avocado fruit. He spends a lot of time in the village digging with peasants and growing avocado. He waxes grand about how Burundi can become an important world player in making avocado oil. Diplomats who go to see him in the capital Bujumbura (and a lot of them do these days that he is a kingmaker in Somalia) often find themselves driven to the bushes where he is digging. And to get his attention, they have to roll up their shirtsleeves, pick a hoe, and join him in tilling the land.

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An Open Society Foundation profile:

© Jeff Hutchens for the Open Society Institute

Nigerian political analyst and writer Ike Okonta examines the failure of democratic and civic institutions in Nigeria four decades after the end of the bloody civil war in Biafra. As an Open Society Fellow, Okonta, an expert in ethnic identity and resource conflict in West Africa, is looking at the lingering effects of the war and the increase in oil revenues on the formation of the post-war Nigerian state.

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Onno Ruhl of the World Bank writes:

Accountability cuts across all aspects of governance: it forces leaders to articulate a vision, puts a premium on sound planning, strengthens implementation, and holds those who steal to account. Accountability can be achieved in many ways: through effective elections, tax payers demanding services for their money, greater transparency about results planned for and achieved, citizens monitoring results and reporting on them, and… ending impunity for those who steal. All of these together would start making a system that works; a system that can transform a country like Nigeria.

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Tolu Ogunlesi writing in the Guardian:

REUTERS/Akintunde Akinleye

...With inspiration from the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt and the power of social media, more people than ever before in Nigeria are aware of and angered by the corruption in the system. Never before in the country's history have ordinary citizens been inspired to discuss budget items line by line. The questions are mounting. For example, how can N1bn ($6.25m) be allocated to the president and vice-president's catering budget, in a country stalked by hunger?
The target of the protests is a system constructed to oppress the poor and protect wealthy criminals. Every day since 2 January, the day after the fuel price increases, protesters have been assembling across several Nigerian states, marching and sharing their messages. And in many cases, enduring police harassment.
Young Nigerians are waking up and realising that we are where we are today because previous governments – maintainers of the corrupt system – were hardly ever seriously challenged, or rigorously questioned.
Now, having woken up, we will not be going back to sleep.

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Niyi Osundare in NaijaBlog:

In the past five years or so, I have been reconsidering my long-held opinion about the relation between leadership and followership. Time there was when I laid all the blame on leadership. Now I’m beginning to say that the followership should also take their fate in their own hands. This is what I see most of the time, for example, in the plays of Femi Osofisan, one of our top writers. Play after play after play; the leaders are there doing things. But the address is to the people. Why must you continue to be ridden like a donkey? Why can’t you, too, get up in the saddle? Nigerians are too docile, too forgiving of bad leadership.

Why are they this way? A number of reasons. The first one is religion. The kind of religion we have in Nigeria is one that puts you to sleep, and after that, puts you to death. It’s not the kind of religion that’s after social justice; it’s not the kind of religion that is after the welfare of the people and the independence of their existence.

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Jeremy Weate writes:

...the lived reality of citizens of the Nigerian state is that it provides little or no security, no infrastructure, no education and no employment opportunities (apart from mostly McJobs in the civil service). Everywhere in Nigeria, the basic elements of civilised existence have to be taken care of house-by-house, compound-by-compound. You must sink your own borehole for water, buy, install and fuel a generator for power, hire security guards to keep the wolves from the door, pay school fees to ensure your kids get a half-decent education because the public school system is in perpetual meltdown. And to earn enough money to get through the day, you must hustle.

The breakdown of a standard tax and political representation based social contract between citizens and the state in Nigeria is almost entirely a result of the past few decades of the so-called ‘resource curse’. Earning billions of dollars each year from crude exports, the Nigerian government has no need to rely on tax from individuals or local companies; tax and royalty payments from the international oil companies (as well as historically, loans from international financial institutions) have been sufficient to fund the annual budget at all levels of government. For the past few decades, cheap fuel has therefore been the only form of social contract between ordinary Nigerians and the state and the principle lever to control inflation during times of rising oil prices. With most Nigerians subsisting on US$2 or less, subsidised fuel has also been a survival mechanism, making life only just bearable.

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From Al Jazeera:

Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan is facing opposition to his decision to cut fuel subsidies, which saw petrol prices double overnight when the decision was made at the start of the year.
Labour unions have now called for a nationwide strike to begin on Monday. This comes following a series of demonstrations held over the past week.
Sectarian violence in the country has also worsened recently, causing a rise in tensions on the street.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria's finance minister, spoke to Al Jazeera from the capital Abuja...[more here]

From iReports:

image courtesy of iReports

The trio of Nigrian literary icons; Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and J.P. Clark have called for a stop to the spread of violence across the country, warning that the country cannot afford another civil war at this time in history.A statement jointly signed by the trio and entitled “LET NOT THIS FIRE SPREAD!!! An Appeal to the Nigerian Nation Community”, reads in full:“The fears we have all secretly nursed are coming to realisation. The nightmare we have hugged to our individual breasts, voicing them only in family privacy, or within trusted caucuses of friends and colleagues – lest they become instances of materialising evil thoughts – has finally burst through into our social, physical environment. Rumblings and veiled threats have given way to eruption, and the first cracks in the wall of patience and forbearance can no longer be wished away. BOKO HARAM is very likely celebrating its first tactical victory: provoking retaliation in some parts of the nation...[continue reading]

Lagun Akinloye writing in Think Africa:

The removal of Nigeria's fuel subsidy has met much resistance but there could be considerable long-term benefits.

The much touted removal of Nigeria’s fuel subsidy came into force over the New Year’s weekend. Annual spending on the subsidy surpassed the $8bn mark by the end of 2011 and its removal forms a central part of the government’s new economic direction to instil fiscal discipline in the country and invest the money saved from the subsidy into infrastructural projects. However, the battle is far from over, with civil society groups and labour unions sounding the drums of war and ordering their members onto the streets in protest as fuel prices more than double across the country...[continue reading]

In Africa Works:

Image courtesy of Bongoweekend

African presidents continue to display a preference for pomp and ceremony over practical action. Sata (president of Zambia) suggests an alternative approach — and is backing up his rhetoric with action. On a recent trip to the historic Zambian city of Livingstone, near the border with neighboring Zimbabwe, Sata traveled by public bus to a meeting with president Robert Mugabe — and then afterwards, even more improbably, settled his own hotel bill.

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Further reading Zambia’s President Sata: A Populist ‘Clown’ With Interesting Off-the-Wall Ideas

Salisu Suleiman writes:

Nigeria’s Constitution recognizes local government areas as the third tier of government after the federal and state governments. Their functions are clearly defined. They are entitled allocation of funds from the federation account for use in carrying out their functions. All of Nigeria’s 776 local councils each receive billions of naira in allocations, but nobody knows where these monies end up. Where are the local roads, dispensaries, schools and markets? Where are the projects to speed up development? Where are the trillions? No wonder it is now vogue for chairmen to own houses in London, Dubai and South Africa. And because there are little checks, accountability is weak and audit systems compromised. The public is generally disinterested.

And so, the looting goes on.

That is why today, there are places in Nigeria that cannot be reached by any form of motorized vehicle; reaching those places entails abandoning vehicles and trudging on foot. That is why in some areas today, medical emergencies are transported to clinics on motorcycles or donkeys. That is why in many places pupils still study under trees in lieu of classrooms. That is why we must ask: Where are the boreholes that are supposed to provide potable water? Why do so many people die from preventable diseases like malaria, typhoid, cholera, dysentery, and meningitis? Why do we have mountains of refuse and clogged drainages all over the country?

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Jack Hamilton writing in Inpec:

Image courtesy of Inpec

The state of Nigeria is facing its largest crisis in over a decade. As the ferocity and popularity of the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram rises, the very unity of the state is being challenged. This collection of photos assesses the reasons why the group is becoming increasingly attractive to the disaffected population in the north despite their gruesome tactics.

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From Africa Industrialization Day where Thomas Mattig of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in conjunction with the Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria stated:

Nigeria is experiencing solid economic growth for several years now. However, employment remains low and can hardly catch up with population growth. The sectors of the economy that are booming such as the banking, telecommunications and insurance industries, do not create many jobs.

 continuing:

...even a large bank branch will only employ a handful of people, while a factory can give employment to a whole town.

regarding the oil industry:

The prosperous petroleum sector is built virtually on extraction and not value addition as Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt refineries remain comatose.

and the critical informal sector:

It is also widely acknowledged that the informal sector provides over 70 percent of employment in the country, yet many workers daily face harassment and intimidation from Government officials at all level whilethere is no systematic programme of training and re-training in the face ofchanging technologies and market dynamics, credible programmes ofaccess to credits as well as decent workspaces.. This must change, workersin the informal economy need state support in capacity building, finance and patronage and social protection.

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via All Africa

Insights on DRC's potential at Al Jazeera:

In Al Jazeera:

Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, is considered one of the most dangerous places on earth. Its two million inhabitants have endured more than two decades of conflict and today a battle rages between the armed al-Shabab group and Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG).Amidst the chaos of this war-torn city, Mahamoud Nur, the mayor of Mogadishu, is trying to make a difference, in part by "altering the mindset of the people"...[continue reading]