The old presidents of Africa
Last weekend, as the World Changers Summit came to a close in Windhoek, Namibia, former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called on youths in Africa to deny aging politicians access to power. He told them to take it instead.
He also had stern words for the old men leading Africa.
“African politicians must learn to retire at a minimum age of 70 years, but rather we have packed old men in our leadership. How can we move forward? Some are even above 80 years and still ruling,” Mr Annan said.
Four years before Mr Annan’s comments, the founder of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, Mr Mohammed Ibrahim, while speaking at an African Development Bank (AfDB) funded summit in Kigali in 2014, said that Africa had been reduced to a laughing stock because of its insistence on holding onto aging leaders.
“You see people at 90 years (old) and about to start new terms; you guys are you crazy or what? We see people in wheelchairs unable to raise hands standing for election. This is a joke; you are free to laugh…the whole world is already laughing at us,” Mr Ibrahim said.
The debate on age of leaders is not new to Africa, and Uganda is still in the middle of one following the passing of the constitutional amendment to remove the 75-year-age limits late last year, which has been challenged in court.
The numbers
Mr Crispy Kaheru, the Coordinator of the Citizen’s Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda (CCEDU), says Mr Annan’s call was timely and appropriate.
“Annan is inadvertently challenging the young generation to stage a legitimate and successful coup de tat against those leaders who may be in the evenings of their lives – especially in cases where old leaders become a threat to society’s progress,” he says.The figures back them up. Twenty out of the continent’s 57 heads of government are above 70 years of age. That’s nearly half.
These include Presidents Ismaïl Omar Guelleh of Djibouti, 71, Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea, 72, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta of Mali, both 73, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana, Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo and the Head of the House of Representatives of Libya, Aguila Saleh Issa, who are 74.
Others are Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria and Prime Minister Barnabas Sibusiso Dlamini of Swaziland and Thedore Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea who are 75 years of age.
Presidents Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe, Evaristo Carvalho of São Tomé and Príncipe, Hage Geingob of Namibia and Alassane Ouattara of Ivory Coast are 76, while Peter Mutharika of Malawi is 77 years of age.
The oldest are Alpha Condé of Guinea who is 80, Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria who is 81, Paul Biya of Cameroon who is 85 and Beji Caid Essebsi, President of Tunisia (2014–present) age 91 years.
Mr Beji Caid Essebsi only became Tunisia’s first directly elected President in December 2014 when his Nidaa Tounes political party won the elections. It is not clear whether he will contest again.
The debate
The problem of an aging leadership had been focused on in October 2015 when CNN reported in its Africa Review programme that the continent had a leadership age gap disconnect between the leaders and the led.
Giving Angola and Zimbabwe as examples then, the report said majority of their populations had not been born when Dos Santos and Robert Mugabe took power. The two have since left power.
CNN put the average age of the continent’s population at 19.5 years and that of its leadership at 65 years.
Back then, there were numerous videos of Robert Mugabe falling off steps had been doing the rounds, but his party, Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu-PF) remained bent on fielding him as its candidate for President.
In Cameroon, Paul Biya is likely to contest again despite the fact that he is clearly unable to rise up to the rigors of a campaign or the challenges that will come with another term in office.
The leadership age gap stretches to Uganda too. The State of Uganda’s Population Report 2017 reveals that Uganda had as of 2016, when the country marked 30 years of NRM rule, the world’s youngest population with over 78 per cent of its population below the age of 30. In other words, 78 percent of the population had either not been born or were less than one year old when Mr Museveni shot his way to power.
Figures from Uganda Bureau of Statistics also showed that as of 2015 the median age of the population of Uganda stood at 15.8 years.
Mr Museveni acknowledges that he is quite old now. In a condolence message that he sent to the Magara family following the kidnap and subsequent murder of their daughter, Susan, he referred to himself as Jajja (grandfather).
And he might still be around for quite a while unless the Constitutional Court quashes Parliament’s December 22, 2017 vote which lifted the lower and upper age limits for the presidency, giving him an opportunity to run again after surpassing the 75 year age cap that had been set.
Another view
Mr Richard Todwong, the deputy secretary general of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), says Africa’s unique past has made it necessary to have older leaders.
The practice of Western styled democracy, he says, plunged the country into turmoil from which it was extricated by mature leaders who have stayed around to maintain the peace and stability that followed years of turmoil.
“Most African countries are emerging out of conflicts emanating out of political contestations and mature leadership has now given us unity and stability,” he says.
However, Makerere University’s Political Science don Dr Sabiiti Makara insists it is down to desire to control power and resources.
“Once some of these African leaders are in power, they have access to a lot of power and resources. They cannot want to let go,” he argues.
Whether it is due to those conflicts that Mr Todwong invokes or not, Africa is plagued by among other challenges youth unemployment, corruption, lack of infrastructure, a break down in the provision of social services and failure to utilise resources for the benefit of the populace. Mr Annan attributes them to continued presence of the old men.
“Africa could be independent, but we have too many old men at the presidency, some are above 70yrs, and what do you expect them to do?” he wondered.
Dr Makara agrees that the problem is largely because leadership remains in the hands of people who might not be capable of thinking for the future.
“When people are young they are innovative, but when they get older even the thinking gets older. In the 70s, they concentrate on keeping themselves in power using state resources when those resources should have gone into production,” he argues.
Does age affect performance?
He says this explains why African countries led by aging leaders, many of them endowed with natural resources and with a great potential to do economically much better, have been the hardest hit when it comes to youth unemployment. He listed Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon as examples.
Uganda seems to be in a similar trap. The 2014 national census revealed that Uganda has about 18m people within the age between 14 and 64, out of which 58 per cent, about 10.4 million people, are unemployed. It also revealed that 47 per cent of Ugandan males within the same age groups are unemployed.
Mr Todwong, however, insists that failure to generate jobs has not been down to channelling resources towards propping up the NRM.
“The high levels of unemployment are not because of misallocation of resources. What we need is to change the education system and the curriculum to train people into becoming producers and train them on how to enter the markets,” he argues.
Mr Annan and Mr Ibrahim seem to argue that involvement of youth in leadership and government is the panacea to Africa’s problems.
“We need to find a way now to get those younger people into power. It is the job of our current leadership to try and empower and trust this younger generation to come forward,” Mr Ibrahim argued in Kigali.
Of course countries like Ethiopia with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) income per Capita of $2,113 and GDP growth figures of 7.5 per cent in 2017, and Kenya with a GDP per capita of $3,496 and GDP growth figures of 5 per cent suggest that the duo’s argument that younger people should be taking charge is potent.
Kenya’s President, Uhuru Kenyatta is 56 years old while the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Mr Abiy Ahmed Ali is 42 years of age.
Short of those few unique cases, there is very little to suggest that states that are headed by people above 70 years are doing worse than those headed by younger people.
For example, Tunisia which has the oldest president has a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita of $11,987 while the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is led by the youngest President in Africa, Joseph Kabila, 46, is doing so badly.
Despite the immense mineral wealth in DR Congo the country comes in number 52 on the African continent with GDP per capita of $785.
The same applies to issues of governance. The oldest politician, Beji Caid Essebsi, has not yet expressed his interest in staying on, but one of the youngest politicians, Mr Joseph Kabila, 46, is refusing to quit despite the fact that the two constitutional terms elapsed in December 2016. While he has avoided amending the constitution to give him legal leeway to stay on, Mr Kabila has stayed on saying that there are no funds for elections.
Should we emulate Europe?
Mr Ibrahim advocates emulation of Europe and America in as far as the age of leaders is concerned.
“Why do these big countries, much bigger than us, entrust their economies, their nuclear weapons and all their resources to people who are in their 40s and we (Africa) pick only people at 90 years old to lead us?” he said back then.
The problem though, is that the old men might not just be about to leave. What will it take to convince them?
“Old leaders should have the humility to ask themselves if they can still do a good job and who they plan on seeing succeed them. I think they also need to be modest enough to listen to voices that tell them, ‘you are no longer as useful as you were, we need fresh blood that will take us forward’ says Mr Kaheru, but are they listening?”
