A Strategic Vision for Africa: The Kampala Movement by Francis Mading Deng, Francis Mading Mading Deng, I. William Zartman

From the Publisher

As the cold war ended, Africa was a major battlefield in the ideological war between the United States and the Soviet Union. However, changing priorities in the United States and the dissolution of the USSR pushed Africa out of the spotlight and into obscurity. As globalization, development, and regional cooperation advanced in much of the world, Africa lingered in provincialism, poverty, and war. It received the attention of the world only when it was unavoidable, as in the Somali state collapse and Rwandan genocide in 1992 and 1994.

This book chronicles the efforts, made manifest in the Kampala Principles, of a determined group working to solve Africa's complex problems. In 1989 Olusegun Obasanjo, then Nigerian head of state and now the democratically elected president, organized the first of many forums that resulted in the Kampala Principles, a document providing a framework for workable political and economic development in Africa. Taking the Helsinki Document of 1975 as their model, participants in the several forums settled on seven key tenets geared toward the adoption of a new and comprehensive politico-economic regime on the continent. They also created a longer declaration of norms and principles.

Francis M. Deng and I. William Zartman, both noted authorities in African studies, examine and evaluate the acceptance of the Kampala Principles. They believe that the Kampala movement is "on the cusp of success or exhaustion," and they now appraise the movement's progress and future in relation to other regional efforts. The preface from President Obasanjo offers a unique perspective on both the development of the Kampala Principles and the current state of politico-economic development in Africa. This book is indispensable for students of political and economic development and for those concerned with the future of a troubled and hopeful continent.

Foreign Affairs

In 1989, a number of prominent Africans, led by Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo, began a push for political reform and regional cooperation with a view to improving Africa's potential for stability and development. Bypassing the ineffectual Organization of African Unity, they established a group known as the Conference on Security, Stability, Development, and Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA), sometimes optimistically called the Kampala Movement. Authoritarian governments put up obstacles, and the initiative languished even before Obasanjo's incarceration by dictator Sani Abacha in 1995. Since then, South Africa has emerged as a regional hegemon, and Obasanjo was elected Nigeria's president in 1999. Now he has joined Thabo Mbeki in a new but similar reform initiative, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (nepad). This book was written without explicit reference to nepad, but it provides a sympathetic yet critical look at the rise and decline of Obasanjo's earlier "movement." Most notable are the authors' discussions of how the CSSDCA approached the definitions of sovereignty, security, and democracy, and why the initiative foundered during the 1990s. An important commentary on Africa's political evolution.

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Table of Contents