Africa fostering shared values priming and promoting an anti-corruption culture

Fostering Shared Values: Priming and Promoting an Anti-

Corruption Culture

BT Costantinos, PhD Chairperson, AU Board on the African Union

Convention to Prevent and combat Corruption in Africa Professor of Public Policy, School of Post Graduate Studies,

Faculty of Business and Economics, AAU

2011 African Union Summit

Africa Union Symposium on Shared Values

United Nations Conference Centre, January 2011, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Embargoed draft / restricted

Contents

Abstract… i Introduction…1 1. Challenges to African Enlightenment and shared values…2 2. Composing an African enlightenment and shared values …5

2.1. Personal purpose in life is the foundation of shared values…5 2.2. Civil society ripeness…5 2.3. Culture as a realm of shared values…6 2.4. Democratic citizenship and legal empowerment for shared values…8 2.5. Quality Education for critical thinking…8

3. Paradigmatic shifts towards an African enlightenment and shared values …9 4. Concluding the discussion and issues for debate on the way foreword …12 5. References…15

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Fostering Shared Values: Priming and Promoting an Anti-Corruption Culture

BT Costantinos, PhD Abstract

Since its emergence in the early 20th century, the modern African State has been typified by autocracy and primarily existed for the benefit of the powerful elite of the centre. The populace had become distrustful, critical of the state, and wary of having any contact with it. Corruption, graft and sleaze are not just about self-enrichment through the abuse of public responsibilities. Promoting bad public policies also undermine the population’s well being.

Enlightenment and shared values are human’s emergence from self-incurred imma-turity-- to throw off the spoon-fed dogma and formulas and ‘cultivate our minds’, in which reason is the primary source for legitimacy and authority. In composing an African trajectory that can foster shared values, we consider the position taken by ethno-philosophers, and their main rivals, the professional philosophers, adopt the view that philosophy is a particular way of thinking, reflecting and reasoning. Within current pro-jects of political reform, enlightenment and shared values are either conventionalised or sterilised on terrain of theory and often vacuously formalised on the ground of practice and enter African society in relatively abstract, syncretic, and plain form, yet is expected to land itself to immediate and vital African polity's socio-political experience. It suggests itself and seems within reach; only to elude, and appears readily practicable only to resist realisation.

The central hypothesis is that the relative strength of organisations determines the rules of the political game that are installed. Shared values require a plural set of rules, which ensure critical thinking, and promote, and protect rules of peaceful participation and competition. The questions that arise here are not so much the diversity of ideas, values, and opinions allowed to gain currency as modes of their competitive and co-operative articulation. Do shared values enter national processes as an external ideol-ogy, constructing and deploying its concepts in sterile abstraction from national beliefs and values? Do they come into play in total opposition to, or in co-operation with his-toric values and sentiments? In the struggle over the establishment of rules to foster the anti-corruption movement, do we equate the articulation of shared values with the pro-duction of broad-based concepts, norms and goals? Do such processes signify change in terms of the transformation of the immediate stuff of national politics into an activity mediated and guided by objective and critical standards, rules and principles?

While many proposals for remedial action have been formulated, real commitment to positive and collaborative processes at continental and inter-organisational level has always been limited. Mobilising the action required has also remained a daunting challenge, as many practical and structural constraints militate against commitment by individual groups to inter-organisational initiatives nationally and regionally. Many preconceived notions have been questioned and new ideas proposed. Efforts have also been made to improve understanding of human insecurity, to estimate the risks resulting there from, accurately and to make adequate preventive measures ahead of time.

Because there is always a tendency to find a solution that is smart, simple, and im-moral to every human problem in Africa, states and their international backers tend to have a linear way of thinking that is inadequate to unravel the many complex inter-relationships underlying the. It is neither popular nor scientific. Hence, the issue is about the need for collective learning about responses, and the responsibility to those whose suffering provided the basis for that learning which will never be more urgent than it is now. Unfortunately, such lessons are rarely translated quickly into personal or or-ganisational memories and the inherent will to change. The reasons for this are rooted in human inertia, weakness, and self-interest and are equally often the products of a genu-ine confusion on how to act most effectively in an environment growing more complex.

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African enlightenment, renaissance and shared values to foster anti-corruption culture – BTC 2010, Page | 1

Introduction

The term ‘Enlightenment’, that drives home the essence of shred values, came into use in English during the mid-19th century,1 with particular reference to French philoso-phy, as the equivalent of a term then in use by German writers, Zeitalter der Aufklärung, signifying officially the philosophical outlook of the 18th century. The Age of Enlighten-ment is the era in philosophy and intellectual, scientific and cultural life, centred upon the 18th century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source for legitimacy and authority. Developing simultaneously in European nations, the movement was buoyed by Atlantic Revolutions, caught up with in instigating an intellectual revolution that has brought about the enlightenment.

Set against this background, the challenges and prospects for an African enlighten-ment and shared values are numerous and the task of penning such a paper equally cum-bersome. While Africa is rich both in its physical endowment and cultural resources, the challenges have their roots causes and the driving forces of slavery, colonialism, milita-rism and barbarism, pseudo democracies and elections, the role of international devel-opment agencies and regional political establishments, globalisation and the politics of rights, state fragility, failure, and collapse. African states are systems of patronage and are closely associated with rent-seeking activities. Their external relationship is designed to generate funds that oil this network of patronage. Their trading system is designed to collect revenue to oil the system. Much of the productive activity is mired in a system of irrational licenses and protection that is designed to augment the possibilities of rent collection. Much of the private sector in the continent is an active and central element of this network…2 Nevertheless, problems of mal governance and a civil society rendered decadent in this process, it is easy to follow the current trend within the international community and advocate shared values as a desirable form of progress paradigm that promotes critical thinking. Nor is it difficult to make normative judgements about how nations should be-have if shared values are to grow into a positive agent of change. Nevertheless, it is not so easy to conceptualise shared values as a working process, which is balanced against strat-egy, to determine what makes for real, as opposed to vacuously formal process. As a way of contributing to the overcoming or lessening of these difficulties, we may theorise them as the dynamic interaction of strategy and process.

It is possible to see them as the playing out of objective and critical standards, rules and concepts of economic, social and political conduct in the goals and activities of all participants, those of public officials who make and administer the rules as well as those of ordinary citizens. The issue here is not simply one of ‘application’ of rules to particular activities. Nor is it one of dissolving agent-catered strategies into ‘objective’ principles and norms. It is rather the production or articulation of process elements and forms within and through the strategic (and non-strategic) activities of participants.

Highlighting the mutually constitutive and regulative articulation of strategy and process, we shift the centre of analysis away from the two as separate formations that en-ter only external relations with each other. This shift of analytical focus serves to empha-sise the critical point that the task of broadly structuring shared values to prevent corrup-tion work as a system is more important than that of promoting it within the specific na-tional five-year national plans of a particular nation. The making of broadly inclusive process should consist of an articulation of rules, institutions, process and strategy, which can be sustained, in its structure or system by any party or government operating within it. Indeed this explains why current discussions and analyses of shared values are generally marked by several limitations.

The paper hence highlights the following. The first section presents the challenges and analytical limitation on promoting shared values. Section two and three are about composing an African enlightenment and shared values and the paradigmatic shifts nec-essary to achieve it and finally, the conclusion.

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1. Challenges to African enlightenment and shared values to prevent corruption:

1.1. Analytical problems in current perspectives of enlightenment and shared val-ues and African renaissance:

1.1.1. Shared values as dynamic interaction of strategy and process: It is easy to follow the current trend within the international community and advocate African enlightenment, renaissance and shared values to prevent corruption as a desirable form of African progress. Nor is it difficult to make normative judgements about how societies and polities should behave if African enlightenment, renaissance and shared values to prevent corruption are to grow into a positive agent of change. Neverthe-less, it is not so easy to conceptualise this as a working process, which is balanced against strategy, to determine what makes for real, as opposed to vacuously formal process. As a way of contributing to the overcoming or lessening of these difficulties, we may theorise this as the dynamic interaction of strategy and process. It is possible to see this as the playing out of objective and critical standards, rules and concepts of economic, social and political conduct in the goals and activities of all participants, those of public officials who make and administer the rules as well as those of ordi-nary citizens. The issue here is not simply one of ‘application’ of rules to particular activities. Nor is it one of dissolving agent-catered strategies into ‘objective’ princi-ples and norms. It is rather the production or articulation of process elements and forms within and through the strategic (and non-strategic) activities of various par-ticipants.

Highlighting the mutually constitutive and regulative articulation of strategy and process, we shift the centre of analysis away from the two as separate formations that enter only external relations with each other. This shift of analytical focus serves to emphasise the critical point that the task of broadly structuring African enlighten-ment, renaissance and shared values as a geopolitical system is more important than that of promoting it within the specific national programme of a particular nation. The making of broadly inclusive shared values should consist of an articulation of process and agency, which can be sustained, in its structure or system by any party or government operating within it. That is why current discussions and analyses of tran-sition to African enlightenment, renaissance and shared values and generally are marked by the following limitations.

1.1.1.1. a tendency to narrow African enlightenment, renaissance and shared values to the terms and categories of immediate, not very well considered, political and social action, a naive realism, as it were; and inattention to problems of articulation or production of global systems and process within local politics rather than simply as formal or abstract possibilities;

1.1.1.2. a nearly exclusive concern in certain institutional perspectives on African enlightenment, renaissance and shared values with generic attributes and characteristics of social, economic, cultural and political organisations and consequent neglect of analysis in terms of specific strategies and perform-ances of organisations in processes of such transition; and ambiguity as to whether civil society is the agent or object of global change and concerning the role of the state;

1.1.1.3. inadequate treatment of the role of companies and the Bretton Wood Institu-tions and of relations between global and indigenous aspects or dimensions of African enlightenment, renaissance and anti-corruption shared values

1.1.2. Agency: Participants in and around projects of African shared values generally con-stitute a network or intersection of institutions and groups. These include indigenous governments that preside over formal processes, organisations not affiliated with rul-ing coalitions, and intellectuals that operate outside official channels and struggle for

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a share of influence. In some cases, other components of society and polity are in-cluded: a free, though constitutionally and legally not very well protected, press, CSOs involved in promoting grassroots work; professional associations; and multilat-eral and bilateral agencies and private international aid groups, which collectively ex-ert far-reaching external influence over reform. Generally, the larger the number and diversity of participants actively involved, the greater the variation.

Uncertainty and complexity of forms of agency and activity possible notwith-standing, a more open and free process is likely to be in its formal as well as informal aspects. Admittedly, the actors typically have their own primary ‘functions’ quite apart from their role to prevent corruption. Every one of the players is geared toward specific interests, concerns and activities beyond or outside the ends of reform. Even if they are expressly committed to promoting reform, it is always possible for partici-pants to lose themselves in the specifics and ‘forget’ the process as a whole. Yet a par-ticular actor in pursuit of a limited objective within the global network, as a condition of maintaining coherence and effectiveness and enlisting co-operation from other participants, will have to modulate its agency and intentions. This has to come in such a way that their complex, differential play in alternative institutional practices and in varying forms and contexts of activity is possible. Each actor must formulate its own project in a spiral form that to some degree allows the project to ‘escalate’ or to open into other activities within the reform network. To restate the basic point, the extent and nature of openness of African shared values are conditioned by the breadth of the range of available participants and the degree of uncertainty and complexity that characterised their agency and functional relations.

1.1.3. Polity: There are, however, countervailing currents and pressures within the inter-section of participating organisations and groups, which tend to work against or limit process openness. These forces of process closure manifest themselves in the struc-ture of the network of participants and in their activities. The forces may or may not be transparent to the consciousness of the actors that channel them.

At the structural level, a certain hierarchy of agency and activity is evident within the network of participants, such that some actors assume primary position relative to others that are by comparison limited players. For example, indigenous govern-ments are involved more commandingly and directly in running projects than local non-governmental organisations. Certain international agencies range their activities and influence across the network extensively while others are localised. As global au-thorities with massive financial and intellectual resources at their command, they are major players in reform with whom indigenous governments and other recipients of their assistance must co-operate or come to terms with; at the expense of their phi-losophical assets so well grounded in their histories.

This hierarchy of agency effectively places some participants in the reform net-work in positions of subordination. It also places limits on the range of agents and forms of practice, which can be networked through domestic and international sup-port. Thus, although their legally recognised existence and growth are crucial for Af-rican enlightenment, renaissance and shared values and good governance, other par-ties, and academia tend to be neglected or marginalised. Often, they are forced into the background (or underground) of the formal process, or into partial or total exclu-sion. African nations, on the other hand, while they have to reckon with external aid conditionalities, are often supported into becoming the source of laws and policies. It is also ironic that it is on this basis that the agency and activities of alternative and opposition groups are 'regulated' or their participation in determining the rules of the game is allowed or disallowed. In some cases, this is predicated in narrowness within the structure of global and local regimens and organisations whereby the process cre-ates participants and participants in turn create processes in self-enclosed, formalis-tic, reciprocally constrictive articulation. In short, the uncertain and, potentially at

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least, open political, institutional and intellectual environment in which shared val-ues will have to evolve is generally counter-balanced by a significant degree of strati-fication of organised actors and by relatively settled relations of power and authority into which the actors enter.

1.2. Structural constraints for promoting shard values to prevent corruption are re-inforced by specific, more or less conscious, uncertainty and complexity reducing activities of key participants, particularly the governments and their foreign backers. As an interval between one regime of thinking to another on a higher level of critical thinking during which competing actors claim and contest over power, shared values may be characterised by rules and forms of engagement that are ‘in constant flux’ and may lead to ‘any number of unpredictable alternative outcomes’. At the same times, however, the interval is marked by aspiring parties that seek to quickly get their hands on the flux of events and circumstances, often succeeding in immediately securing themselves in and projecting power;

There is a strong incentive for emergent African regimes, connected to real or imagined threats of violent opposition to shared values to prevent corruption, to engage in activities which short-cut or pre-empt the development of an open and level ‘democratic’ playing field. These activities include the reduction of an entire environment of change to a specific programme of shared values to prevent corruption, all too often guided (or misguided) by non-African thinking; with all the pre-emptions, displacements, and substitutions of agency and activity this implies and effects of process closure it contains. The truncating of the pro-tracted and complex passage from declared intentions to effective and open societal and po-litical process may involve the use of public media and institutions available to governing elite. Often they are used to villainise intellectuals and opposition groups and exclude them partially or entirely from the formal process as necessary condition for maintaining peace and stability during reforms. It is always possible for the flux of events to turn overly ‘or-derly’ very quickly through the activities of governing elite.

In engaging in uncertainty reducing activities which short-cut the full emergence of open and transparent process, regimes often enlist the support of outside participants in reform, notably Western governments and international agencies. External actors may support this through a variety of mechanisms. The range of supportive measures they take may even be expanding beyond efforts aimed at government renovation into broader areas of reform, in-cluding the support to civic organisations and press freedom and independence. Neverthe-less, international agencies also worry about political instability, civil strife, and economic disorder to which democratic governance reforms might lead.

The demise of human, social, cultural, economic and political capital has led to the abject poverty where all countries that fall below the red mark in human development indicators are African. Globalisation of public policy, the debt crisis, mal governance, HIV/AIDS, the lack of operational credit and capital markets, a very high belief in peasant economy has rendered the continent undevelopable. Life is even made more exacting and demanding by the knowledge that only; a few of the millions who struggle for survival outlive the next subsistence meal. Over-dependence on external funding sources and the search for external funds also greatly erodes the capacity and commitment of African nations and civil societies to mobilise and achieve consensus around issues of common interest for autonomous de-velopment.

Notwithstanding the colonial legacy, that is still taxing the continent, new faces and forces of vulnerability and poverty haunt the Africa region. Conflicts, corruption, disasters, poverty and pandemics now threaten the region with a calamity unforeseen even during the Great African Famine of the 1980s. Northern DRC, Darfur, Somalia, etc., have become a new insignia of human ‘bestiality’. Hence, the need for the fundamental change on how we deal with the internecine crises…When the basic functions of the State are no longer per-formed, they breed widespread internal conflict, revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, adverse regime change, genocide, politicides, and de facto or de jure loss of government legitimacy.3 The consequences are domestic effects – ‘conflict trap’, neighbourhood effects – conflict

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spill over; arms spending; economic consequences, and Global Effects – havens for terror-ists. In responding to this, one observes massive inflow of foreign aid to improve services and create jobs to ‘show quick and tangible results to cement the peace’, significant techni-cal assistance to build government functions and bold economic and political reforms. De-terminants of potential state failure are:4

material well-being of citizens: unfulfilled expectations, difficulty of delivering quick results, urban bias and security constraints

International influences: openness to trade, conflicts in neighbouring countries, large influx of money, corruption, foreign aid footprint, local elites

Regime type: no distinction between autocracies and democracies Re-building country vs. the state: alternative delivery mechanisms de-legitimise

government, institution building is slow, unrealistic reform agenda, focus on pseudo-democracy, multiple and varied donor agenda;

2. Composing African shred values and enlightenment:

2.1. Personal purpose in life is the foundation of enlightenment and shared values: Indeed philosophers from Plato to Hegel and Marx have augured purpose in life as the pri-mary engine that drives human growth, development and well-being in many ways. Henry David Thoreau, Mitch Albom, Og Mandino, and British mathematician Alfred North Whitehead… have long been on record saying, the way you get meaning into your life is to devote your life into loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning – arts, music, intellectual development and service of the community. Finally, we have a scientific proof that a purpose driven life is visioned with human transformation, happiness, safety and security. More than semantics, even the streak of millenarianism, conjuring apocalyptic visions of a perfect new world rising from the ashes of the old, that has run through much of Ethiopian faith history, may now have found some logical grounding more than ever…5

2.2. Civil society ripeness

A major problem inherent in the process of developing shared values in Africa is the ex-treme weakness of the social movements and their failure to develop coherent strategies for promoting broad based and well organised citizenry. For the lack of opportunities for self-organised civil associations, whose functions are to preserve basic rights of its constituents and the society, educate the citizens and advocate popular claims, build a consensus and promote political and moral ethical values, and disseminate them among the populace, it has become difficult to nurture a sense of civil society. Practices such as free elections, the formatting of political parties, free and open discourse on public issues are all foreign con-cepts that need to be installed in the minds of the majority of the populace. The lack of po-litical culture is also clearly manifested in the disarray and inability of the ‘opposition’ forces to achieve internal unity.

Thus, the preoccupation with ethnic and cultural communities in Africa represents a lar-ger issue having to do with the restructuring of the African polity as a whole. It concerns the ‘liberation’ of Africa as the understood and operational concept, not one of simply changing or improving the position and status of ‘nations’ or, in simpler terms, ethnic groups; but the radical transformation of the values, traditions and institutions of the African nation-state itself in their historic and contemporary forms. It is wrestling at once with the question of the ethnicity and the problem of national unity connected with it. For the ‘liberators’ of Af-rica, popular unity was deeply flawed, established and maintained at the expense of nations and peoples by

the subjugation of ethnic communities in military conquests; economic exploitation and political tyranny in which the machinery of a centralised

state was used as an instrument of national oppression; and cultural domination which devalued and suppressed the languages, customs, and

religions of diverse citizens,

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Hence, it was not based on the distinctive identities, interests and aspirations of various nationalities; rather, it was based on the domination of a small ruling class.

Because pressure for regime transformation comes from society, it yields the spontane-ous interests, demands and institutional mechanisms of change. The states’ function will not be to manage society's shared values aspirations and activities, but to create the ena-bling conditions for their free play. Institutions and groups in civil society must form and run themselves. When they begin to address longer socio-economic and political issues be-yond their limited sectional concerns, or to co-operate with the state on certain matters, they should be able to do so in terms of their specific interests and competence, not as mere instruments or extensions of states. Alternatively, the underdevelopment of civil society in Africa and the incapacity of institutions within it are seen as major barriers to democratisa-tion. The activities of some social institutions may have the salutary effect of bringing into transparency the work of state, and of opening up state institutions and practices to public suiting. On account of this view, the state assumes a large role in democratisation. It is as-signed the task of nothing less than ‘cultivating civil society’ itself through political educa-tion and mobilisation.

In reality, a rich associational life characterises African society. However, the richness of such forms of associational life does not imply the presence of a strong civil society as con-cealed here. The kinds of associations prevalent in the context of African authoritarian or hegemonic regimes tend to reflect the weak character of the state. Informal association are characterised by fragmentation and disengagement from the state institutions. In these sense, civil society in many African countries is weak. While associations exist, they have not developed structures that are more formal and not openly presented themselves in the public area. The weakness of the state meant that few incentives existed to form autono-mous organisations to engage with the state rather the 'exit' option prevailed as individuals preferred to remain outside the reach of state institutions. We have then divergent repre-sentations of civil society accompanied by somewhat conflicting conceptions of the role of the state in the passage to democracy.

The perception of society as producer of the spontaneous interests, demands and institutional resources of enlightenment and shared values to some degree con-flicts with the view of civil societies in Africa as weakly developed social and insti-tutional structures in need of cultivation and support by state institutions.

The conception of state institutions as creator of the enabling environment for the free activities of individuals and groups diverges from the view of state as political educator and democratiser of society.

Moreover, these conflicting perspectives commonly tend to confuse representations of ‘civil society’ and ‘the state’ as conceptual or ideal categories with actual communities and regime fuelling the transition. The categories are often conflicted into the immediate stuff of African political and social experience. This is not to deny that there are representations of civil society and state institutions in current perspectives on democratisation in Africa where the elements categorised are more evidently those of really existing African social formations. It is to note a disabling analytical tendency in which the actualities of African politics tend to be pre-emptied and displaced by the very conceptual categories used to de-scribe them otherwise.

2.3. Culture as a realm of shared values:

2.3.1. Genesis of state crises and corruption: Claud Ake (1990) underpins the fact that, Africa’s problem is not so much a problem of character defect or ethical failure as it is one of misunderstanding arising from decontextualising and dehistoricising social phenomena. We are making judgements based on false analogies and false comparisons on the separation of meaning from social context, behaviour from cultural milieu, and action from social structures. Judgements are based on representations especially the perception that the Western state, and its correlates, market society and bureaucratic

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organisation exist in Africa or ought to exist. They are not based on the realities on the ground. The project of establishing a specifically Western form of political domination has not succeeded in Africa because of the colonial legacy and the determined resistance of African culture. What the colonisers of Africa established in the cause of the state project was not so much a state in the western sense as an apparatus of violent repression. The colonial state needed a great deal of arbitrary power to subordinate the colonial terri-tory, to exploit it, and to protect it from the hostilities unleashed by its dehumanising treatment of its victims that put it in a permanent state of war against indigenous soci-ety. The logic and assumptions of the colonial state were so different from those of the indigenous societies, that it was disconnected from their experience and so threatening that it has been fiercely resisted. Because of its licentiousness and the logic of the colo-nial interests, which controlled it, this force was replete with contradictions and kept the territory, which it was supposed to integrate disorganised. The alienation of state from society and the perception of the state as a hostile force have bred a crop of informal polities parallel to and competitive with the state. People have politicised local commu-nities, primary loyalties, ethnic groups and nationalities as a political force to shield themselves against the state and to compete for the appropriation and exploitation of its power. The state is not really the quintessential public institution that it is assumed to be. It is not really a res publicae. It is not the state of all, it is at best, the state of some. By the same token, its administrative apparatus is not really a public service.

Culture is always subject to change since it is human creation, although, states might believe it that citizens cannot change it in any significant way. Africans are awash about the enormity of their problems, and this can be disabling. Overwhelmed by the magnitude of poverty and violence, they tend to go passive -- or to strike out in usually futile individual acts of rage; thus, maintaining the tyranny of those who benefit from the status quo. Hence, a deeply radical idea that is the definitive aug-mentation of the idea of shared values must be grounded on the fact that each cul-tural community has rights that deserve respect, and that each must have a voice in the vital decisions that affect the quality of lives. Those who command a lopsided share of supremacy would not be content to hear this brainwave put forward, for it burdens them to account to those who are locked out by the current order as this sphere is a threat to a state with an all-pervasive regulation of society.10.

Africa has folklore, legends and narratives (expressionism such as the one that had prevailed in Europe since the Renaissance) through which its people invest their history with meaning and value. They have been subjected to ‘materialist’ criticism from the perspective of its ‘scientific’ standards of historical knowledge and truth as if they were simply epistemological categories. Africa is rich in the visual, literary, and performing arts, that strive to express subjective feelings and emotions rather than to depict reality or nature objectively. An African artist tries to present an emotional ex-perience in its most compelling form -- with its inner nature and with the emotions aroused by the subject, frequently caricatured, exaggerated, distorted, or otherwise altered in order to stress the emotional experience in its most intense and concen-trated form.

2.3.2. Institutions and culture are closely linked. Of the two aspects of culture identified, cosmological beliefs have been as important as material beliefs in determining eco-nomic outcomes. Material beliefs can change rapidly, as can the institutions based on them. Cosmological beliefs influence the polity. The initial resource endowments of the ancestral civilisations governed the form of their polities and engendered cosmological beliefs, which provided political legitimacy. There is great hysterisis in cosmological beliefs, and ‘ipso facto’ in transferring one type of polity into a region with a differing cosmology. But, paradoxically, the multiplicity of political forms as long as they do not represent an 'enterprise association' in Oakeshott's sense in themselves do not hinder economic growth.

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Thus, a particular political form such as democracy is not essential for devel-opment; after all, it was hereditary monarchy not democracy that delivered the In-dustrial Revolution. What matters for intensive growth is that the market should be allowed to function. Here the sages of the Scottish Enlightenment were clearheaded about the link between the polity and the economy. They recognised the importance of good governance, which for them was provided by a government that promoted opulence through natural liberty by establishing laws of justice, which guaranteed free exchange and peaceful competition. However, the improvement of morality be-ing left to non-government institutions, but they were quite undogmatic about the particular form to promote these characteristics of the State seen as (Oakeshott calls it) a 'civil association'. On this view of the State it is not seen as the custodian of laws which seek to impose a preferred pattern of ends (including abstractions such as general welfare, or fundamental rights), but which merely facilitates individuals to pursue their own ends. (Depak Lal, 1999). The concept of cultural democracy com-prises a set of related commitments:

protecting and promoting cultural diversity, and the right to culture for everyone in our society and around the world;

encouraging active participation in community cultural life; enabling people to par-ticipate in policy decisions that affect the quality of cultural lives; and

assuring fair and equitable access to cultural resources and support;

2.4. Democratic citizenship and legal empowerment for shared values: Citizenship is an important concept in the late twentieth century. The natural rights announced by the concepts of ‘liberty’ ‘equality’ and ‘fraternity’ and their attempts to found the modern nation state constitutionally on the will of the people helped to construct the modern conception of citizenship. In the global market economy the importance of world trade continues grow, and multinational companies whose turn-over often exceeds the economic resources of small domestic economies are gearing themselves to global business strategies; every day on the international money markets, hundreds of billions of dollars are traded, only a frac-tion of which goes into trade in commodities. (Korsgaard, 1997) The historic changes set in motion since the late 1980s in Africa have been produced largely by movements of citizens striving to realise or to redefine their citizenship rights and citizen community. Increasing economic, legal and political integration will begin to challenge national sovereignty and will begin to involve the creation of a new transnational sphere of citizen's rights, institu-tions and community.

In many developing countries, laws benefiting the poor exist on paper but not in practice. They are not implemented unless the poor or their allies push for the laws’ enforcement. Legal empowerment, as opposed to the rule of law orthodoxy (ROL), is an alternative para-digm in the use of legal services to amplify peoples’ voices -- a materialisation of commu-nity-driven and rights-based development, grounded in grassroots needs and activities that can impact on national laws and institutions. It prioritises civil society support because it is typically the best route to strengthening the legal capacities and power of the poor. At the same time, it does not preclude important roles for states. However, still exceptions to the rule, there are increasing instances of this ‘mainstreaming’ taking place in ways that benefit human rights, development and project performance. This alternative approach puts com-munity-driven and rights-based development into effect by offering concrete mechanisms, involving but not limited to legal services, which advance shared values of the disadvan-taged. It makes the ROL more of a reality for them that so far, mainly consist of diverse civil society initiatives rather than deliberate donor programmes. (Golub S, 2003)

2.5. Quality Education for critical thinking: Quality education and learning throughout life have become apparent as the keys to the 21st Century. The mission of guaranteeing quality of education is to safeguard the public interest in sound standards and to encourage its continuous improvement. Public self-assurance in academic standards requires public understanding of the achievements represented by higher education qualifications. This

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dwells on quality education and lifelong learning; the notion of naive realism; neglect of analysis of specific strategies; process openness; agency and ideology and. It discuses the purpose of the framework, number of levels in the framework, qualification descriptors and the need to develop a code of practice for the assurance of academic quality and standards in higher education.

Within Africa, the supply of ideas of education may be artificially deflated by particular strategies and mechanisms used by the incumbent to manage entire reform processes. Con-ceptual possibilities may be left unrealised, or sub-optimally realised, insofar as governing elite are preoccupied with filling out those spaces of uncertainty in quality thought, dis-course and action that alternative groups would occupy in the course of their own engage-ment. The crux of the challenge is creating an intelligent and critical mass of human quali-ties and ensures their effective participation in the development process, retaining and put-ting it productive use. It is about having the ability and willingness to identify, sequence, and execute human-centred development priorities and programmes in the face of limited human, financial and institutional capacities. The results would lead to the creation of a strong nation, active in both domestic and world transactions.

Irrupting into History: In the 60’s and 70’s saw most of engaged in a romance with left-wing politics as advanced by Marx and Freire. Its pledge was to methodical and far-reaching analysis of the source of human suffering ‘walking with history,’ one that ‘shared a uniquely common ground with biblical concepts such as idolatry’ and the notion of an apocalyptic deliverance (revolution) to a new life. This has inspired creativity and renewed vitality among grassroots thinkers. Accepting Marx’s interpretation of history, they an-nounced that they were encouraging the poor to ‘irrupt into history’ by rising up to inten-sify class struggle and seize our fair share of the economic bounty’. (Spretnak, 1996). Quality education, which hitherto has been connected to a certain phase in life, has now become a lifelong necessity. This implies that the whole life span, which so far has not been given pri-ority in educational policies, has now become the cornerstone in the renewal process of so-ciety. Quality education for critical thinking and the development of conscious praxis based on responsibilisation is the key to 21st Century competitiveness. (Freire, 1960) “As the global marketplace promotes the acceleration of international linkages… and other forms of transnational education, quality remains the key to their sustainability.” (Lenn, 2004)

Shifting concepts of scholarship for promoting shared values: Historically, there are two different and important theoretical and ideological strands. The first concept was related to a humanistic tradition and connected with self-development. The new under-standing of lifelong learning was based on a neo-liberal concept regarding education as an investment in human capital. The theory of human capital expressed a view concerning the economic reason for adult education but had almost nothing to say about social justice. Current perspectives on quality education accentuate human capital that breeds greater competitiveness. (OECD, 2004),

3. Paradigmatic shifts towards an African enlightenment and shared values:

3.1. Political rules and organisations: The author submits that the paradigmatic shifts can be explained with reference to two institutional factors: political organisations and political rules. The central hypothesis is that the relative strength of organisations determines the rules of the game that are installed. African enlightenment and shared values require a plural set of organisations that promote and protect rules of peaceful participation and competition. Together, institutions (plural organisations plus rules of accountability) en-sure popular participation and intellectual curiosity. Different kinds of organisations play a leading role during different phases of transition. We hypothesise that the absence or weakness of certain kinds of organisations explains why it stalls at certain key junctures. Essentially, these norms and procedures would have to become fully assimilated by a ma-jority of the players within a system. There must be consensus on the rules of the game, whether these rule are embodied in legal texts, or in less formal but no less real customs of

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politics as it is practised. Democratic rule institutionalises uncertainty. It can succeed if and when all political actors accept this uncertainty as opposed to the rigidities of dictatorship.

3.2. The learning organisation for shared values:

It could be argued that the notion of the learning organization provides managers and others with a picture of how things could be within an organization. Along the way, writers introduce a number of interesting dimensions that could be personally developmental, and that could increase organizational effectiveness – especially where the enterprise is firmly rooted in the ‘knowledge economy’. However, as we have seen, there are a number of short-comings to the model – it is theoretically underpowered. There is also some question as to whether the vision can be realized within the sorts of dynamics that exist within and be-tween organizations in a globalised capitalist economy. It might well be that ‘the concept is being oversold as a near-universal remedy for a wide variety of organizational problems’ (Kuchinke 1995 quoted in Kerka 1995). There have been various attempts by writers to move ‘beyond’ the learning organization. Thus, we find guides and texts on ‘the developing organization’ (Gilley and Maybunich 2000), ‘the accelerating organization’ (Maira and Scott-Morgan 1996), and ‘the ever-changing organization’ (Pieters and Young 1999).

In one of the more interesting developments there has been an attempt to take the al-ready substantial literature on trust in organizations (Edmondson and Moingeon 1999: 173) and to link it to developments in thinking around social capital (especially via the work of political theorists like Robert Putnam) (see Cohen and Prusak 2001). We could also link this with discussions within informal education and lifelong learning concerning the educative power of organi-zations and groups (and hence, the link to organizational learning). Here the argument is that social capital makes an organization more than a collection of individuals. (Social capi-tal can be seen as consisting of ‘the stock of active connections among people: the trust, mu-tual understanding, and shared values and behaviours that bind the members of human networks and communities and make cooperative action possible’, (Cohen and Prusak 2001: 4). Social capital draws people into groups.

This kind of connection supports collaboration, commitment, ready access to knowledge and talent, and coherent organizational behaviour. This description of social capital sug-gests appropriate organizational investments – namely, giving people space and time to connect, demonstrating trust, effectively communicating aims and beliefs, and offering eq-uitable opportunities and rewards that invite genuine participation, not mere presence. (Cohen and Prusak 2001: 4) In this formulation, we can see many of the themes that run through the approach to the learning organization that writers like Watkins and Marsick (1993) take. The significant thing about the use of the notion of social capital is the extent to which it then becomes possible to tap into some interesting research methodologies and some helpful theoretical frameworks. Quite where we go from here is a matter for some de-bate. It could be that the notion of the ‘learning organization’ has had its ‘fifteen minutes of fame’. However, there does seem to be life in the notion yet. It offers an alternative to a more technicist framework, and holds within it a number of important possibilities for or-ganizations seeking to sustain themselves and to grow.

3.3. Ethno-philosophy and philosophical sagacity:

3.3.1. Ethno-philosophy has been used to record the beliefs found in African cultures. Such an approach treats African philosophy as consisting in a set of shared beliefs, val-ues, categories, and assumptions that are implicit in the language, practices, and beliefs of African cultures; in short, the uniquely African world view. As such, it is seen as an item of communal property rather than an activity for the individual. One proponent of this form argued in Bantu Philosophy that the metaphysical cate-gories of the Bantu people are reflected in their linguistic categories. According to this view, African philosophy can be best understood as springing from the funda-mental assumptions about reality reflected in the languages of Africa6.

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Another more controversial application of this approach is embodied in the concept of Negritude. Senghor, a proponent of negritude, argued that the distinctly African approach to reality is based on emotion rather than logic, works itself out in partici-pation rather than analysis, and manifests itself through the arts rather than the sci-ences. Other authors, on the other hand, while agreeing that African culture is unique, challenged the view of Africans as essentially emotional and artistic, pointing out that Ethiopia and Egypt were an African culture whose achievements in science, mathematics, architecture, and philosophy provided a basis for Greek civilization. This philosophy may also be maligned as overly reductionist due to the obvious scien-tific and scholarly triumphs of ancient Egypt, Nubia, Axum, as well as the great li-brary of Timbuktu, Great Zimbabwe and extensive trade networks in Africa.

Critics of this approach argue that the actual philosophical work in producing a coherent philosophical position is being done by the academic philosopher, and that the sayings of the same culture can be selected from and organised in many different ways in order to produce very different, often contradictory systems of thought. One can imagine trying to develop an English theory of mind by collecting proverbs and idioms such as "I'm in two minds about that", "He's out of his mind with worry", "She has a mind like a sieve", etc. Philosophical sagacity is a sort of individualist version of ethno philosophy, in which one records the beliefs of certain special members of a community. The premise here is that, although most societies demand some degree of conformity of belief and behaviour from their members, a certain few of those mem-bers reach a particularly high level of knowledge and understanding of their cultures' world-view; such people are sages.

In some cases, the sage goes beyond mere knowledge and understanding to reflec-tion and questioning — these become the targets of philosophical sagacity. Critics of this approach note that not all reflection and questioning is philosophical; besides, if African philosophy were to be defined purely in terms of philosophic sagacity, then the thoughts of the sages could not be African philosophy, for they did not record them from other sages. In addition, on this view the only difference between non-African anthropology or ethnology and African philosophy seems to be the national-ity of the researcher. Critics argue further that the problem with both ethno philoso-phy and philosophical sagacity is that there is surely an important distinction be-tween philosophy and the history of ideas, although other philosophers consider the two topics to be remarkably similar.

3.4. Professional philosophy: Professional philosophy is the view that philosophy is a particu-lar way of thinking, reflecting, and reasoning, that such a way is relatively new to (most of) Africa, and that African philosophy must grow in terms of the philosophical work car-ried out by Africans and applied to (perhaps not exclusively) African concerns. This view would be the most common answer of most Western philosophers (whether of continental or analytic persuasion) to the question ‘what is African philosophy?’ Critics of this view note the ethnocentricity within this statement. The question to them is "What is philoso-phy?" Those who hold the viewpoint of the Professional Philosopher would likely answer, "European, American and Asian philosophy alone shall be called philosophy.” Profes-sional Philosophers therefore must either provide more detail regarding their views or ac-cept that their views are simply ethnocentric.

3.5. Shared values, customary systems, rules, and procedures (very often unwritten) often establish accountability and link the rights and responsibilities, thus providing a basis for human development and human security. These systems have been enriched through evolution over many generations (where they have not disintegrated through marginalisa-tion). Individual decisions concerning natural resource management and utilisation are based on a "legal" framework that has reference points to the optimal exploitation of these resources, and transgression is punishable by cultural laws and the regulations that legiti-mise the latter. Individual and collective accountability to communal and intra-inter gen-

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erational interests are very high. Communal tenure and management systems are complex and adaptive. The user rights provided by these systems are often strong, and confer a high degree of tenure security to individuals.7

In order to maintain diversity therefore, it is necessary to acknowledge the cultural diver-sity, which contains the knowledge necessary to maintain it. Local knowledge is a reflection of the context-specific diversity. In order to maintain this diversity it is necessary to ac-knowledge the linkages between local knowledge and context- specific management of re-sources. By maintaining this array of cultural-embedded technical knowledge and the cor-responding ecosystems, it becomes possible to sustain healthy and productive local re-source management for the benefit of local livelihoods, possibly leasing to more sustainable resource management at the national and regional levels. Throughout much of Africa, gov-ernments, donors and other development agents are becoming increasingly aware of cus-tomary management, customary rights, endogenous institutions, and the existence of dif-ferent knowledge systems. There is also a growing recognition and understanding of the po-tential for linking to and supporting these in an effort to realise sustainable resource man-agement and development, and the need to try overcome the constraints described above. In short, endogenous institutions and resource management systems represent a latent re-source; providing potential alternatives where modern approaches have not attained expec-tations or counterpoints/correctives for mainstream development approaches.

4. Concluding discussion and issues for further debate:

4.1. Processual elements: African enlightenment, renaissance, and shared values will com-monly be characterised by a number of distinctive and shared additional elements, including concepts and rules of governance, national and cultural values, traditions of discourse and arguments, and modes of representation of specific interests, needs, and issues. These ele-ments, or complexes of elements, will tend to assume varying forms and enter into shifting relations of competition, co-operation, and hegemony during political reform. Generally, the broader the ranges of ideological elements at play, the more varied and uncertain relations are the greater are the possibilities for process openness and transparency that exists.

As stated earlier, certain international agencies range their activities and influence across the network extensively while others are localised. Hence, the proliferation of varied condi-tionalities tied to specific policies and sectors – adjustment programmes and good govern-ance reform measurers to be implemented, administrative and human rights codes to be fol-lowed, environmental regulations to be adhered to often outpace the development of coher-ent standards, rules and concepts by and within which societies and polities have to operate. Therefore, local process has generally not matched global action. With all the multiplicity of different, not very well co-ordinated, programmes, projects, mechanisms and activities, it has been a bit difficult to maintain a sense of direction, in both a strategic and process sense. Like the evolution political culture and emergence of agencies and activities to which they are of-ten tied to closely, ideological constructs tend to be unsettled and, at times, unsettling.

Particularly at the initial stages, they are more likely to be uncertain rather than stable structures of ideas and values. This has the effect of opening up the entire process, of freeing the process from simple domination by any one organised actor or coalition of actors. Yet, global ideological elements and relations take shape and come into play within a hierarchy of global and local agencies and groups. A determinate order of institutions, powers, interests and activates operates through complexes of ideas and values, filling out, specifying, an-choring and, often short-cutting their formal content or meaning. Moreover, this may im-pose ideological as well as practical limits on the extent to which and how anti-corruption re-form processes can be opened up or broadened. Thus, the fact that promoters of the anti-corruption crusade do not efficiently realise the potential of the ideas and goals they promote raises the issue of whether the ideas in question may be fundamentally constrained at the moment of their conception by the very technocratic structures that ground their articula-tion. Within countries, the supply of ideas may be artificially deflated by particular strategies and mechanisms used by incumbent governments to manage entire reform processes. Con-

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ceptual possibilities may be left unrealised, or sub-optimally realised, insofar as governing elite are preoccupied with filling out those spaces of uncertainty in political thought, dis-course, and action that alternative groups would occupy in the course of their own engage-ment. In the sphere of ideology, openness of process is concerned in part with allowing free expression of diverse ideas and beliefs and permitting unrestricted taking of positions by citi-zens on specific issues. It has to do with creating conditions for the existence of the broadest possible range of opinions and sentiments. Are all ideas and values allowed to contend? Are there laws or ‘codes’ which prevent or hinder intellectual and cultural freedom? Do the views and perspectives of other groups in society have a significant and legitimate place in projects and processes? Is good faith criticism of a particular strategy of a governing stra-tum construed by the ruling stratum in question as negation of shared values as such?

4.2. Ideological discourse to spur shared values: Questions such as these are important in examining and assessing the ideological basis for African enlightenment, renaissance and shared values. However, as important as it is, this is only one context or level of analysis of the breadth and depth of the process on the terrain of ideology. There is another level of analysis, concerned with the extent and nature of openness of distinct ideological constructs to one another, with modes of articulation of given sets of ideas and values and of represen-tations of specific issues relative to others. The concern here is not so much the number and diversity of ideas, values, and opinions allowed to gain currency as modes of their competi-tive and co-operative articulation. Questions that arise are do African enlightenment, renais-sance, and shared values enter national transition processes as an external ideology, construct-ing and deploying their concepts in sterile abstraction from national beliefs and values? Do Af-rican enlightenment, renaissance, and shared values to prevent corruption come into play in total opposition to, or in co-operation with historic national values and sentiments? In the struggle over the establishment of rules of economic and political engagement, does one equate the articulation of global agenda with the production of broad-based concepts, norms, and goals, which should govern the leadership of African shared values? Do such processes signify change in terms of the transformation of the immediate stuff of national politics into an activity mediated and guided by objective and critical standards, rules, and principles? In the light of these questions, it is possible to draw a conceptual distinction between two levels of articulation of ideology and to note the implications of their relations for process openness. There are first, representations of specific interests, identities, needs, wishes, goals, claims, demands and so on, different in different individuals, groups, and communi-ties. These are to be distinguished from a second level of production and circulation of de-mocratic ideology where broad-based concepts, principles and rules take shape and come into play. For convenience, we can designate ideological elements at the former level of par-ticular representations or contents, and those at the latter level of explicit general forms. Particular representations have to do with ideologically loaded articulations of interests, needs, and activities, which may appear or become so immediate as to be taken for sponta-neous realities. Explicit general forms refer to systemic categories and institutional mecha-nisms; they objectively, mediate and generalise particular representations.

In examining or assessing the ideological possibilities and problems of the African enlightenment, renaissance, and shared values process, general forms and particular repre-sentations need to be addressed in terms of their relation, even as they retain their distinct conceptual status. For the two levels of ideology formation, tend to incorporate each other in a more or less uncertain and complex process, as well as constituting relatively autonomous coherence in themselves. The breadth and depth of generic forms cannot be grasped or judged simply on their own worth, i.e., on their theoretical ‘correctness’ or the rigour of their formal construction. Our understanding should not overlook the matter of how far particu-lar representations or constructs inform and condition values, concepts, and rules; but has to conceptualise the relation between the two levels of production of ideology and its impli-cations for political openness.

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One way is to think of it in terms of concrete instances and abstract system. A system of concepts, principles, rules, and procedures provides objective standards to which every in-stance of representation of interests, needs, demands, and intentions and so on must con-form. In this light, it appears as a process in which a global structural model of ideology is applied to local contexts. It is seen as the extension of the ideological and institutional con-tents of the model toward projects to prevent and combat corruption. This conceptualisation may not be entirely mistaken, but it is far from satisfactory. Generic modes are not simply ‘pure’ ideology devoid of practical content; and particular constructs are not merely points of ‘application’ of systemic elements which are wholly external to them and in whose articula-tion they have no role to play. If general forms are seen as pre-given standards to which every instance of representation of particular interests must conform, the effect will be the restricting openness. For that will mean pushing ideas and values produced in the plenitude of social experience to the background and accord primacy to a mere system of abstract categories. It will mean giving primary place to the ideologies of politicians and activists. It must also be noted here that the conceptual and institutional mechanisms cannot ‘come alive’ in local contexts merely as generic forms. They make themselves felt only to the extent individuals, groups, and communities address through them their felt needs and concerns and the circumstances they face.

Alternative way of looking at the relation between general forms and particular contents would give precedence to the latter over the former. Within this perspective, specific organi-sations and groups appear to have more lee way articulating systems of abstract categories according to their particular interests and intentions. Societal fight against corruption as a system of universal concepts and practices will necessarily be instantiated in contexts, but only in line with the specific shared values, aims, and strategies of particular societies and polities rather than within a simple application of its concepts in their pre-given abstract form. Instead of being applied to local contexts, global forms, or models of shared values provide ideological materials for construction in those contexts.

This perspective has merits. It can work as a corrective to the view as a mere extension of a system of abstract categories to concrete instances. However, the issue here is not one of simply giving primary to specific contents over general forms. The concepts and principles of may allow particular interests and intentions to permeate them, yet should take shape through such particularities as distinct, relatively autonomous articulations. It is important to recognise here that there are various ways of connecting particular interests and goals to global concepts and principles of ethics, and that certain ways may be restrictive of process openness and transparency. In some cases, to tie systems to specific ideological intentions and constructs is not to appreciate the systems' inherent breadth and complexity; it is, rather, to operate at levels and within forms of knowledge that encompass only a limited part of the systems' full range.

In addition, states managing processes may use strategies of interest articulation or iden-tity construction that in effect displace or distort the generic forms that provide the stan-dards for their efforts. A given organisation may operate the formal concepts and rules in such a way as to maximise their openness and transparency. Nevertheless, the opposite is not uncommon: a ‘theoretically’ open and free reform process may, in actuality, be domi-nated and narrowed by the particular ideological agendas of assignable participants, specifi-cally tied to regimes. Hence, the relation between explicit general forms and particular rep-resentations in processes can best be grasped as their dynamic, mutually constitutive, or regulative articulation. It is well to recognise that the former do not have effective generality or objectivity of their own, independently of particular elements and contents. If they were wholly independent, the forms will be vacuous and practically irrelevant. Moreover, specific representations are not passive external targets of application of generic forms but in part constitutive of them. In other words, neither one nor the other level has elements, features and functions that it owes entirely to itself. Articulation and structuring of elements occur, or should occur, continually across these levels.

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4.3. Priming shared values to prevent corruption: Thus, priming shared values to pre-vent corruption here entails conceptualisation in global categories that are invested with varying local meanings that are themselves in part actualisation of trends in international political (and development) thought. The openness, transparency, and complexity will de-pend on the extent to which and how global and local levels or dimensions are articulated with each other. This means that the attempt to subsume African enlightenment, renais-sance, and shared values by some particular political agenda or ideological intention (‘indi-genisation’, ‘ethnic self-determination’…) must, therefore, limit rather than enhance open-ness of the process. If what explicit general forms signify is no particular strategy but the very process of enlightenment itself, then any particular agenda or intention must, to the extent it is democratic, allow general forms to work themselves out through it. Conversely, the strategy or strategies must take on generic elements, dimensions, and functions.

African enlightenment, renaissance and shared values process, in order to have signifi-cant constitutive or regulative effects on the plenitude of particular representations, must be allowed to attain coherence and integrity even as it comes into play in varied contexts of activity. While it may be tied to the initiatives and leadership of assignable organisations or groups in its emergence and development, it nonetheless gains currency as a relatively autonomous system that other, competing organisations can also participate in and oper-ate. As a set of distinctly general categories and mechanisms of thought, discourse, and practice, shared values process take the diversity of particular political ideas and activities into themselves and makes them a vital part of its conceptual and institutional economy. They medicate and channel specific actors and their activities by means of an objectification and generalisation that works on and through them.

Independent private sector think tanks that can provide scenarios and options for shared values development are essential and indeed such highly qualified research and policy re-flection are indispensable elements in a modernising society. The more specific objective is one of creating a shared understanding of Africa’s past and present contribution to global societies and identities, generating awareness of the intellectual and cultural roots that have together created Africa’s unique character and encouraging all to take ownership of this as-pect of common identity and to help reshape it for the 21st Century. It is born out of a sense of urgency that something needs to be done, soon, in partnership with states, societies, and likeminded groups, and on a significant scale in order to have meaningful impact.

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TOPIC&URL SECTION=201.html), accessed Oct 16, 2010 34. UNESCO (2005;d) http://www.unesco.org/iiep/eng/research/edqual/edqual.htm 35. Watkins, K. and Marsick, V. (1992) ‘Building the learning organization: a new role for human resource develop-

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1 Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edn (revised) 2 NEPAD Chair statement at the NEPAD Annual gathering… 3 Inder Sud (2005) Promoting Stability and Development in Fragile and Failed States, George Washington Uni-

versity Conference on “The Challenge of Globalisation: Reinventing Good Global Governance” Nov. 4, 2005 4 Ibid 5 Yonas E. Geda, Is It Potentially Neuroprotective? In Geda YE, Roberts RO, Knopman DS, et al. Physical exer-

cise, aging, and mild cognitive impairment: a population-based study. Arch Neurol. 2010;67(1):80-86. 10 Vaclav Havel, ‘the Power of the Powerless’ reprinted in Living in Truth (London: Faber and Faber, 1986). 6 An example of this sort of approach is the work of E. J. Algoa of the Nigeria who argues for the existence of an

African philosophy of history stemming from traditional proverbs from the Niger delta. Algoa argues that in Afri-can philosophy, age is seen as an important factor in gaining wisdom and interpreting the past. Truth is seen as eternal and unchanging, but people are subject to error. It is dangerous to judge by appearances, but first-hand observation can be trusted. The past is not seen as fundamentally different from the present, but all history is con-temporary history. The future remains beyond knowledge. Nevertheless, it is said, "God will outlive eternity.” His-tory is seen as vitally important, and historians are highly revered. These arguments must be taken with a grain of cultural relativism, as the span of culture in Africa is incredibly vast, with patriarchies, matriarchies, monotheists, and animists among the population. The attitudes of groups of the Niger Delta should be no more construed to the whole of Africa than that of Norse Vikings to the inclinations of the Spanish conquistadors.

7 Although communal management systems are also susceptible to co-optation by dominant individuals and groups, accountable and transparent management is more likely to be found within decentralised systems.

Africa fostering shared values priming and promoting an anti-corruption culture

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