Arol Dut*
The Ibrahim Governance Weekend (IGW) is an annual event organized by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, with this year’s event held in Marrakech. Under the theme ‘Financing The Africa We Want’, the participants included Now Generation Network members, civil society representatives, current and former African leaders, university professors, among others, who are contributing to the continent’s governance landscape in their various capacities. As the 2024–2026 Mo Ibrahim Scholar at the University of Birmingham, I had the privilege of attending.
From intense debate among the Now Generation Network members to policy and expert discussions, the IGW was action-packed. While ongoing geopolitical realignment lent renewed urgency to discussions, the IGW’s call for financial sovereignty was not new. It stands on the shoulders of Pan-African giants — such as Thomas Sankara, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Muammar Gaddafi — who championed self-sufficiency and independence from external influences; scholars like Walter Rodney who told us how we were being underdeveloped; theorists like Samir Amin who advocated ‘delinking’, a process he terms as strategic disengagement from the exogenously-prescribed exploitative systems; and economists like Dambisa Moyo who warned that ‘aid is dead’.
Yet, decades later, Africa’s economic sovereignty remains distant, constrained by weak institutions, heavy reliance on external funding, and limited industrial output. The total estimated debt burden is over US$1.1 trillion — a sum almost nearly doubled over the last decade. Compared to other regions, Africa is not the most indebted. However, the continent worryingly holds the highest debt-to-GDP ratio, a trend indicative of its economic struggles. Compounding this, Africa loses an estimated US$90 billion annually through illicit financial flows.
To fund itself, the continent finds it difficult to look inward. While there has been some progress, most countries still face tax-related inefficiencies, which include generous tax exemptions for corporations, weak tax collection, and inconsistent policies. As a result, Africa has the lowest tax-to-GDP ratio globally, leaving public projects and services underfunded and dependency on foreign funding unchanged.
These challenges notwithstanding, my key takeaway is that our primary focus should no longer be diagnosing these problems but understanding why they stubbornly remain unresolved.
While all discussions on financing were important, it was Dr. Mo Ibrahim’s opening address that moved me most. He stressed that ‘… the first thing we need on this continent is peace and security. Without peace and security, we cannot really move forward. We need to find a way.’ A peaceful and secure Africa will create the stable and predictable environment essential for domestic private sector growth and effective mobilisation of domestic resources. This includes boosting investor confidence, supporting infrastructure development, and enabling tax reforms.
Professor Kingsley Moghalu, President of the African School of Governance, makes a similar argument: that Africa must first confront its governance crisis. In my view, this crisis underlines every aspect of development, and the most foundational governance challenge is the erosion of state control over national security.
Across much of the continent, the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence, a core sovereign mandate, is highly contested. For example, in my home country, South Sudan, the peace agreement recognises two Commanders-in-Chief: one under President Salva Kiir (South Sudan People’s Defence Force) and another under First Vice President Riek Machar (Sudan’s People Liberation Army in Opposition). Similar power struggles are found in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Libya. Meanwhile, the Jihadist movements across the Horn of Africa, the Sahel and Lake Chad continue to expand. All of this reflects the absence of a robust central authority and the state’s inability to enforce law and order.
The resulting instability is not only a human tragedy, but it stifles economic activity, shatters investor confidence, and makes sustainable tax collection nearly impossible.
To move forward, African states must reform the security sector. Beginning with professionalising, de-ethnicising, desectarianising and depoliticising the police and military. This includes fair recruitment, professional training and adequate equipment. Such reforms are essential for institutional autonomy and to enable security forces to act impartially, effectively and perform their duties. Rwanda has succeeded in this approach. For example, post-genocide, Paul Kagame prioritised security reforms which resulted in the establishment of an effective police and military that restored order, protected territorial integrity, and laid foundations for broader development.
However, most post-conflict African states struggle to emulate Rwanda’s success either due to limited capacity or lack of political will. In these cases, it is incumbent on the regional institutions or, more broadly, the African Union (AU) to intervene and assist the countries in reforming their national security sectors. First, by providing technical assistance for reform design and implementation, including capacity-building and monitoring mechanisms. Second, through the establishment of conditional funding based on tangible progress. This is in line with the remarks by former AU Commission Chair, Moussa Faki, that peace and security are central to Africa’s development agenda, and that the AU has a vital role to play.
Once the security foundation is established, next is a well-trained and properly equipped meritocratic civil service, effective tax reforms conducive to investment, and independent judiciaries that constrain elite capture. Moreover, this should include formation of transparent audit functions that expose corruption. Together, these reforms would promote much-needed public trust, reduce the rampant corruption, improve government efficiency and lay foundations for a broader development agenda. To succeed in implementing these reforms, states must leverage optimal sequencing, or simultaneity where possible, with the rule of law, a competent bureaucracy and tax reforms.
Elites are often reluctant to institute such reforms knowing that they threaten their control over power and resources. In such cases, bottom-up pressure becomes essential to generate top-down political will required for change. This demands a coalition of forces: organised social movements, civil society watchdogs, an engaged diaspora network and a free press.
‘Financing The Africa We Want’ is a call to action on Africa’s leaders and citizens alike to have a mindset shift from rhetoric to reality. If it does not happen, the continent risks becoming a graveyard of unimplemented resolutions.
*Arol Dut is a South Sudanese MSc student in Development Policy and Politics at the University of Birmingham, where he is also a research assistant at the Governance and Social Development Research Centre. He is the 2024–2026 Mo Ibrahim Scholar at the University of Birmingham.
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